


Scooby Doo: The towns passed Sandpine Coast

by UnwantedSubtext



Category: Scooby Doo - All Media Types
Genre: 1960's, Alternate Universe, F/F, Period-Typical Homophobia, Supernatural - Freeform, Swearing, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-08-28 13:43:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16724502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnwantedSubtext/pseuds/UnwantedSubtext
Summary: It's autumn 1966 in the small coastal town of Sandpine college. And Daphne Blake's life is panning out exactly as she expected. She talks with respectable people, her father runs a respectable church, and she attends the Sandpine's comunity college with her childhood best friend and man who she will one day marry: The respectable Fred Herman Jones.But when people start going missing in the nearby towns, and Daphne accidentally gets pulled into a vietnam peace rally by the infuriating Velma Dinkley and Shaggy Rogers. Things quickly spiral away from the life Daphne was expecting.





	1. Chapter 1

#    
Chapter 1

  
  
It was cold. It was 12:17. It was pouring.

  
A black Chevrolet lay broken down in the country road ditch. Bonnet steaming, mud splattered on it’s glossy black paint, and fat icy rain slamming against its roof.  It was the middle of nowhere, paddocks until the horizon. The kind of neat fluffy wheatfields that chart topping country singers dreamed about. Except at 12:17 in the middle of an autumn storm.

 

The thick curtain of rain nearly obscured the man climbing out of the door with a torch  into the ankle deep mud and downpour. Mr Baker. A wiry, young but well dressed man. Instantly drenched the moment the he scrambled out of his company car to view the grimy white smoke seeping from the card bonnet.

“Damn, damn, damn it all to hell. Engine and all!” He lay a heavy kick into the front tire. The satisfying thud lost in the roaring rain.

 

He groaned, yanking his hat down over his ears, and peered through rain splattered horn rimmed glasses. Trust his boss Captain Bower to send him out through the forsaken countryside in the middle of the night with nothing but a small stack of papers and a broken company car. Not to mention that his favourite watch stopped working 4 miles back. And he sent him out on a Wednesday no less, nothing ever good happens on a Wednesday.

 

This was the final straw. When he got back, he was joining the union.

 

He squinted through the night and downpour. There didn't seem to be another soul in sight, besides the unwelcome company of the bone chilling midnight rain. He fumbled with his clunky flash light, that flickered unreliably. There seemed to be only dark paddocks of towering wheat and wooden fences for as far as the eye could see. Which was unfortunately not very far anyway. But as he squinted even further he could catch sight of something. A small little yellow light in the distance. Most likely from a farm house off the empty country road.

 

Mr Baker pulled his soggy trench coat around his boney shoulders and shivered. Finding a little pathway easily with his light he briskly jogged up the rocky farm path. The cold metal of his flickering torch further numbing his frozen fingers. They probably had a phone, and he hadn't heard of a kindly country stranger turning down a folk in need in these parts. Especially not him, he had one of those faces.

 

His oxfords splashed in clay and grass, the icy mud soaking through his breathable trousers. He cursed himself under his breath for not wearing something warmer.

 

Branches and brambles clawed at his pant legs in the dark. But he was so cold  and tired at this point he barely cared. He jumped onto the porch, free from the drenching rain from now. The torch dangerously flickered.

 

He could see the house from this close. Well,  Maybe calling it a house was too modest. It was three storeys tall, grey paint flaked off the slouching weather boards like drying skin, and the entire house seemed to subtly sink in on its own weight. It looked ghostly, hollow, and it didn’t help that the beams seemed to softly groan in the whipping storm.

 

It wasn't it the best shape, wasn't modest either. But, Mr Baker wasn't  picky.

 

He took a small glimpse, looking up at the warmly light second floor window through the rain. He swore he could see a figure through it. Tall and hunched, probably a lonely old man. He was in luck.

Lonely old people tended to like him quite a bit.

He knocked on the door.  “Hello? Hello! Terribly sorry, but you see… my car has broken down. Well you probably cannot see it in this weather” He called through the  door. He paused for a moment, maybe two, and put his ear to the termite softened wood of the front door. Soft footsteps could be heard from the other side. Padding down the stairs, slowly and methodical, as if in time with a drum. The light in the window seemed to have gone out as well, he could now see the soft yellow glow filter from underneath the front door. Mr Baker grinned to himself in relief.  “Sorry if I've woken you, but I saw your light on and was wondering if I could trouble you to use your phone?” the steps started to close in to the front door. My Baker hugged himself a little, his jaw chattering from the icy cold. His torch began to flicker aggressively. He noted to pick up some batteries when he finally got to town. “I do know it's the middle of the night, my boss likes to run a tight ship and wanted me to deliver some files for the morning. He was a captain in the war you see. Very strict, doesn't understand sleep.” he laughed to himself a little. The light under the door was very strong now.  The bulb burst in the torch, glass shattering around his feet. “Damn!” He heard the lock on the door click and the chain being slowly slide back. He resumed a non threatening posture “Thank you very kindly, I'll be only a moment-”

 

The door slammed open, and Mr Baker’s throat went dry.  He jumped back, but an arm shot out scrunching the front of his shirt.  Something sharp pricking his skin. He went to scream but before the sound could come out the arm jerked back. Flinging him into the house with a crunch. The door slammed shut.

 

A torch rolled on the porch. The rain roared on.

 

*****

 

  
  
Daphne had rehearsed this. She had nearly even written it down.

 

She could talk to nearly everyone on the campus, from stand out gentlemen like Fred Jones and Dick Benford to the creepy astrology major Barbara Wently who smelt like old books and for some reason motor oil.

 

But this girl.

 

The words got stuck in her throat, she could never think properly, and It drove her up the wall. Here she was, Daphne Blake, daughter of the town vicar, high school yearbook committee leader, knew the name of every single awkward pimpled teen in her year, at least friendly with every student body in Sandpine Community College. She could out talk a car salesman but when it came to that girl and her stupid little pamphlets, her mind felt completely blank, and her mouth unacceptably dry. Daphne did everything socially acceptable to avoid her in the mornings.

 

Didn't help that there was only one entrance to the campus building. Or that she was always right next to it, every morning, without fail.

 

But, she was going to do it today, nobody made her look like a fool. She was going to get passed with her head held high. And she wasn’t taking a bloody pamphlet either. She squared her shoulders, neatened her fashionable scarf, and marched up the leaf litter covered main concrete path to her college entrance.

 

She reached the steps. She froze. The cool autumn breeze may have brushed past her ears, as the lazy morning glow dusted her perfect hair. But she was still frozen. There on the concrete steps was the dreaded Velma Dinkley, pure snark wrapped in an orange turtleneck, with eyes locked behind huge round glasses that could pierce through a giant. Her skin crawled. Her mind went as blank as a bus driver on a smoker’s break as a pamphlet was pushed into her hand. She grabbed it.

 

Failed step one.

 

“Protesting the Vietnam war this afternoon, park across the road, 6 PM, be there.” Velma said. Daphne nodded stiffly, her smile becoming crooked, her ears slightly red. The words spilled out of her before she could catch them.

 

“O-oh, of course. Be right there, sounds hip, looking forward to it, protesting Vietnam, I am also against Vietnam, sounds great!” The words slipped out like vomit out of a mechanic at happy hour. Velma stared back  hand on hip, eyebrow cocked, as Daphne completely tripped over all her sentenced. She was doing it again, she didn’t know how this girl managed to unnerve her whenever they talked. But she did. With everyone else she could small or sweet talk her way around anything, she got that from her father. But this woman seem to shake all her armour off until she was a bare, stuttering, awkward buffoon. Her. Awkward.  

 

Yes, Daphne Blake totally loathed the pamphlet pushing, protest organising Velma Dinkley.

 

“You do know the protest is for the war not the actual country?” She said dryly. There it was, the judgement crashing down on her back like a bag of bricks. She nearly stuttered. Her. Stutter. Actually, now she thought of it she was already a trainwreck in this conversation anyway. She just wanted this conversation to end. To move on in her nearly perfect life. But, even if Velma wasn’t the most fashionable person, she had one of those dry wits that commanded your attention.

 

“Uh, yeah totally knew that. Completely. It's all that's been on the news!” Nice save. She smiled a little too wide, and Velma peered at her through her glasses, like she was an insect under a microscope.

 

“Hmm, it will be great to see you at the protest then. Remember, signs are 75 cents.” She smiled, she moved on to pamphlet pushing the poor sod behind her.

 

Daphne fled the conversation, neatly tucking the pamphlet into her purse.

 

*****

 

Daphne sat uncomfortably upright in the diner's booth after class. Watching the grey oozing tides from the sticky scratched window of Jo's costal diner. The diner was one of those places you walked past and never entered. The wallpaper was cheap, some tiles was already mysteriously cracked, the windows were scratched, and the waitress seemed to only exist when taking your order . It was one of those places that was slightly unnerving, but cheap enough that only hungry college students were brave enough to open the door.

 

Open the door though, and you would find soft booth seats, no food poisoning, and a jukebox that was relatively Hymn free. Fred and Dick thought Jo's coastal diner had it all, even with the worrisomely sticky tables. And dragged Daphne here whenever they wanted to “treat” themselves. Fred sat across from daphne. As expected.

 

Fred and Daphne had grown up next door to each other and had been friends all their life. They had gone to the same kindergarten; both gone to her father’s church; their families even sat at each other's tables for dinner every month.They both knew it was only a matter of time before they started dating, got married, had two children (maybe a dog) and a white picket fence. They hadn’t though. Dated yet. They had never really said it out loud, but, neither of them were really in a rush yet. Despite her mother’s knowing clucks of her tongue when he was around the house, or Fred’s father’s approving nods. They each had their studies. They both had plenty of time.

 

She looked over at Fred. Broad shoulders, blonde hair,  always neatly dressed with a bright orange ascot around his neck. Other girls lingered on him as he walked by. But right now, he was hunched over a diner table, nose in a menu, and unusually tuned out from the world. But she didn’t press him on that. Mostly because she was a little untuned too.

 

A sweaty arm shot passed her head towards her bag. Yanking it back.

 

She whipped around. Dick benford stuck his hand into her purse and started rummaging around.

 

“Dick!” She gasped.

 

“I known you for 2 years now, Daphne. I know you have mints in here” he paused pulling out the pamphlet she had tucked away in there. The badly printed pink paper dwarfed by his massive boulder like hands.

 

“Wow, Daphne! Why do you always pick up these things?” He chucked the purse back to her swinging over the the seat next to Fred. Fred didn’t even move at this.

 

Daphne groaned, hand on her forehead. “Come on, Dick. Give it back.”

 

Dick held the pamphlet daintily in his hands. “The future is nigh! Fight the adults one acoustic song at a time!” Daphne tried to snatch it but Dick held it further away, leaning into Fred. Fred didn't look up from the menu, somehow absorbed in the never changing specials. “6PM today, come to Sandpine park to protest the Vietnam war. Show the system that we won't be silenced. Peace protest, signs 75¢, and draft card burnings” Dick let out a low whistle, Fred jumped up from his menu. Daphne gave Dick a pointed frown and he shrugged,  gave up and slid the pamphlet back over to Daphne. “So much of this hippy mumbo jumbo these days. Good thing I know that's not something we would get caught up in”.

 

“Yeah, of course not” Daphne folded the pamphlet carefully back into her purse. She had meant to throw it away, she just hadn't got around to it yet. Dick began to talk about something music related. But it fell on deaf ears, The crackling of the kitchen radio grabbed her attention.

 

“...Hamishville Police are investigating an abandoned car they found on the top of a cliff this morning. The Black 1963 Chevrolet Impala was found to have belonged to missing persons: Thomas Baker. Who was declared missing last Thursday morning by his employer...”

 

“That's the fourth disappearance this week.” Daphne muttered.

 

“What?” Dick stopped mid sentence.

 

“Oh, on the radio. That's the fourth disappearance they've had in one of our neighbouring towns this week!”

 

Dick’s puzzled expression melted into a lazy smile as he hooked an arm over the back of the booth. “Are you scared? Don't worry, I'm certain big Fred here will protect you” He squeezed Fred's shoulder playfully,  lifting his brow.

 

Daphne sighed. She leant on the table, but once the sticky surface seeped through to her elbows she instantly regretted it. “No. I mean. Doesn't it worry you?”

 

“Nope. Police are on it. Not like anyone in Sandpine coast goes to those parts anyway.” Dick frowned. “Now, about that rock and roll-”  
  
“Fred? Don’t you at least find it a little odd?” Daphne leaned over to Fred. He jerked up from his menu.  
  
“Huh? Wha? Oh, right! Not at all daph.”  
  
Daphne pinched the bridge of her nose. “Are you even listening Fred?”  
  
“Ummm” Fred hid behind his menu again. “They have mac and cheese on special again, guys!” Daphne just let out a dejected sigh while Dick gave a low teasing whistle.  
  
“Uh, oh! Trouble in paradise” Dick nudged Fred. “Anyway, new rock and roll hall has a show tonight. Looks outta sight, you in?”  
  
Daphne lent back in her booth, straightening her deep purple dress. “No, sorry Dick I have... something I have to do.”  
  
“It better not be that hippy bull-”  
  
“It’s not!” she snapped.  
  
Dick raised his hands in surrender and leant over to Fred. “Fred, you in?”  
  
“Sorry, pal. I have stuff I have to do today.”  
  
Dick groaned. “Since when do you two have plans…?”  


*****

 

Sandpine park was one of the central landmarks to the coastal town, a large tree filled space that spilt onto the lazy sandy rocky shores that the town was named after. It was usually filled with small groups of milling teens or elderly couples on acceptable hours of the weekday afternoon.

 

But not today.

 

Daphne couldn’t see the grass from the sea of long hair and colourful tie dye shirts. Signs stuck above the sea of lounging protesters like boats on the ocean;  its hissing waves became the hums of the distant acoustic guitars; the rocks the modest collection of painted hippy vans; and for the salt air the smells of cigarettes, burning sage, and something suspicious Daphne couldn’t quite name. Her head felt slightly dizzy, though.

 

She stood before the crowd, she promised herself she wouldn’t come. But, well, Velma put a lot of effort into that pamphlet. And with such a large event, she had to be in the know, right. But, she never would’ve expected this many people showing up.

 

It was too late to turn back now though, She was here now. She took one discreet long breath, flicked her perfect hair, and stepped into the sea of song, guitar, and soft mutterings. She made her way forwards. She didn’t know what she was moving towards, she hadn’t even seen the majority of these people before. Had they come into Sandpine Coast just for the protest? Just how far did Velma and her people distribute these pamphlets? Because there were way more people here than she had seen walking around the town, some had even pitched up tents. She didn’t even know what she should be doing here, she just pushed forwards, hoping she would at least find something interesting by accident. She picked through the murmuring crowd. But she didn’t look down enough, her foot caught on something soft. She stumbled, tripping, and crashing to the ground. She heard a soft yelp.  
  
“Dang it Scoobs!” long lanky hands hooked under her armpits and hoisted her to her feet. Pulling her face to face with a tall dangly man, he had dark blond locks tumbling over his head like an old mop, and a soft soul patch on his chin. She recognised him from campus.  
  
“Oh, Norville! Fancy meeting you here.” She recovered dusting herself off.  
  
“Like, same to you. And like, just call me Shaggy.” The large soft mass that she tripped on slowly began to shift, Daphne yelped. But Shaggy pulled it towards him, a large greying great dane that was nearly as lanky as his owner. “Like, sorry about old Scoobs. He can be a bit of an ankle tripper. He, like, sleeps more than he stays awake” He patted the old dogs head, Scooby leaned into him.  
  
“Oh. You brought your dog?”  
  
“Yes seree. Me and old scoobs go everywhere together. Isn’t that right scoobs.” Scooby yawned. “So, like, since when did you come to these, man?” he clipped a leash to the dog’s collar.  
  
“Oh, well, I just wanted to see what it was all about.” She smiled sweetly. She hoped that was true, she didn’t really know herself. Shaggy seemed to light up.  
  
“So, like, this is your first time, man?”

 

“Well, yes.”

 

“I’ve been to loads of these, man! Actually I even went to like, a peace protest last night… But I may have… forgotten most of what happened during that-” Shaggy frowned, then gently grabbed her wrist. “But like, Come on then, man! I’ll show you where to grab some food before the draft card burnings start.” He pulled her along. Daphne didn’t mind, Shaggy was basically an old but excitable farm dog, and it was impressive how well he was able to dodge and swerve around all the lounging protesters with her and a clumsy Great Dane in tow. A man had stationed himself with a food cart at the edge of the protest, jaded but making the most of all the new potential customers. She got herself something small after her meal at the diner, Shaggy however, ordered like a man left starving in the woods for a week. She was surprised he didn’t drop any of the arms full of food as he guided her to the centre of the park.

 

He lead her through the tightly knitted groups of protesters, they were all standing now, signs in hands. It felt like she was picking her way through a corn field. They stopped at a large cluster of people, all standing around a large clearing. Everyone was watching and waiting, tension was thick in the air. She didn't expect this, they were almost like statues with how still some people were being, holding their breath. She could hear the distinct crackling of fire in the clearing’s centre.  
  
Shaggy paused from golfing down his massive order of food for a moment, his eyes widening. “Oh, man. Like, that’s not good!”  
  
“What’s going on?”  
  
“They’re burning their draft cards. Which is like, totally illegal, and the police have like, turned up too.”  
  
“Why is everyone stopped though?”  
  
“I dunno, man. Like, everyone is watching this one guy.”  
  
Daphne stood up on her tiptoes, trying to look over the crowd. She finally caught a glimpse of the clearing. Everyone was staring at two men. One stood shakily next to  a small bonfire, with a few other nervous men around him, a bit beyond him was a volley of cop cars, parked as a barricade. A man spoke over the roof of one of these cars, he was broad shouldered with a handlebar moustache and a megaphone. His red face was twisted into rage. She recognised him from church. Deputy sheriff Jones, Fred’s father. The man standing by the fire was a little different, also broad shouldered but neatly dressed holding his card shakily over the flames. She could see the back of his head, and a bright orange ascot.

 

“Freddie!” She gasped.

 

“Frederick Herman Jones! You step away from that fire this instant!” Deputy Jones commanded. Fred clung onto the draft card, tediously dangling it over the fire. Another police officer jostled up to the deputy.

 

“Sir, they’ve already burnt 5 drafting cards. We have to legally arrest them!” He hissed. The Deputy, gritted his teeth.  
  
“Give me a minute Williams! I ain’t letting no boy of mine join a group of god damned hippies!” He spat. Williams, frowned, hand on pistol, glaring at the fire.  
  
“I’m not going, dad!” fred shouted. His voice noticeably shakey.  
  
“You, my boy are going to march away from that fire, man up and follow that damn draft!”  
  
“This isn’t 1943-!”

 

“you’ve been letting these loonies get to your head. No son of mine is becoming a fucking hippy...!”

Daphne started pushing her way through the tightly knit spectators. A dangly arm grabbed her. “Like, wait! Where are you going!”  
  
“I can’t just let Freddie be out there by himself! I’m going out to help him.” Daphne hissed, she turned back to trying to force herself through the crowd.  
  
“Do we have to?” Shaggy gulped.  
  
“You don’t have to join me, but I won’t leave me friend out there by himself!”  
  
“Like, I can’t just let you do that by yourself, either!” Shaggy tried to give her a reassuring grin, but his eyes were wide with fear. She almost paused, she hadn’t expect that from a near stranger. She shook her head, trying to get her scrambling thoughts into line.  
  
“Come on” she gave another push through the last of the crowd with Shaggy and Scooby in tow. They wandered into the clearing, deputy Jones’ head snapped towards them like an owl staring down a mouse.

 

“Ms. Blake! This is no place for a fine lady like yourself. Here to talk some sense into my boy, are you?” She and shaggy stopped a little behind Fred, his arm still outstretched over the fire. Daphne paused, she hadn’t thought this far ahead, she sort of decided this half on habit. Her legs felt wobbly. She looked around her, hundred and  hundreds of watchful protesters’ eyes watched back. And deputy jones’ stare seemed to bore a hole through her very skin. Scooby let out a low lazy bark. She gulped.

 

“You're not talking me out of this Daph, I can't go to war! I can't!” Fred took a deep breath. She had to talk him out of this, he was standing in front of armed police officers, he was breaking the law. She drew in a shaky breath, and tried to calmly fixe her posture.

 

Daphne went to open her mouth and caught glimpse of Velma from the side lines, sign in hand, frowning. Daphne's voice tripped on her throat, “I won't stop you Freddie.” The words spilled out. Her eyes shot wide.  A single voice whooped in the background.

 

Her limbs went stiff and her jaw clamped shut, she could feel her pounding pulse as her heart hammered against her ribcage. If she was anyone else she might’ve broken out  into a sweat.

 

She couldn’t take that back could she?  

 

She meekly looked over to Deputy Jones. He looked like a volcano ready to explode.

 

“Tell me, Frederick! How I raised a boy ready to turn his back on his country when they need him most?!” He barked. His grip loosened on the megaphone. “Do you have some sort of love or something you don't want to leave behind, son?” He growled, but his eyes nearly seemed soft at this phrase. Fred seemed to jump at it, he fumbled with his hands.

 

“Um. Well. I guess? I mean- yes I do dad!” He dramatically reached behind him, grabbing a sleeve of the person standing behind to him. “Daph-” he yanked forwards, yanking Shaggy tumbling to his side.  “Ah..?”

 

“I mean, zoinks. I like, guess forgot a lot more than I thought last night, man!”

 

The silence punched the world in the face. Shaggy standing next to Fred, Fred looking at him in bewilderment, the deputy paused mid sentence. Fred let out a soft “Whoops?”.

 

“Son.” the deputy voice dropped dangerously low. A few policemen uncomfortably looked his way, hands drawing down to cans of pepper spray or their pistols. “What is the meaning of this?” the deputy’s hand slowly floated to his baton. Fred looked back from his father, to shaggy, to the sea of shocked protesters behind him.

 

“Oh, nevermind!” Fred muttered.

 

Fred dropped his Draft Card into the fire.

 

Police office Williams roared. “Ugh finally! C'mon! bag them, boys!” The officers exploded over their car barricade, batons in hand. Protesters roared in response, spinning on their heels, scrambling away from the incoming police. Some dug their heels in the dirt, signs held high like swords. The park erupted into pure chaos.

 

“Zoinks!’ shaggy yelped, grabbing Fred's arm. “Like, let's go, man!”

 

Daphne Blake, was frozen solid. Police were swarming towards her, hippies were scattering behind her, and her childhood best friend was running away hand and hand with another albeit more scraggly man and his elderly great Dane.

 

To put it mildly, this was not the evening Daphne Blake had envisioned for herself.

 

A hand grabbed her arm. “Jinkies! What do you think you're doing!” Her mind started clicking into gear. The hand dragged her away and soon her feet were sprinting along. Velma dragged her along behind her, police swarmed in around them, protesters were being spear tackled to the ground right and left, screams piercing her ears, she could smell the sting of pepper spray in the air. And she swore she heard gunshot at one point, too. “C'mon, we need to get out of here!” Velma yelled. People streamed in either directions all around her, a raging ocean of tie dye and signs. It made her head spin.

 

Velma however, seemed to stream through the sprinting protesters. Ducking and weaving around the dispersing swarm of people. If Daphne’s head wasn’t spinning she might’ve even been impressed. Velma yanked her towards a van parked by the road. Light blue and green with orange flowers scattered along the side. Shaggy hung out the back beckoning them in, Fred in the driver's seat revving the engine. Shaggy grabbed Velma's and Daphne's arms. And hauled them into the back of the van. The crashed onto the cold metal floor. The doors slammed shut. The screams still pouring in from the outside.

 

“Like! Step on it man!!” Shaggy hoisted himself up.

 

“I'm trying! I'm trying!” Fred snapped.

 

“So, like! Try harder!” he yelled.

 

Fred flicked the key. The Van lurched, throwing everyone plus Scooby doo against the back doors with a thunk. The engine roared and the van throttled forwards, wheels screeching in the dirt “Sorry!” Fred called.

 

Shaggy and velma pulled them out of the pile of tangled people now on the floor. Daphne stared at nothing, like a deer in the headlight. Sirens erupted behind them. Velma shot up, sticking her face to the rear window. She nearly toppled when the van bounced over a curb “The police are after us Frederick!” she called.

 

“But why!” Fred stuttered.

 

Velma pinched the bridge of her nose, bracing herself as the van bounced and lurched over the uneven road. She spun around. “Because, Frederick! In case you just forgot. You just showed down a bunch of conservative police officers at an illegal peace rally, publicly destroyed your vietnam draft card, and openly declared you had a boyfriend in front of hundred of onlookers.

 

And now! You're daddy: the deputy sheriff of Sandpine Coast, is chasing after you AND 4 illegal protesters and their dog in a runaway hippy van going 50 miles over the speed limit”

 

“I, uh. Oh.”

 

“So we have to get away, and get away fast!” She spun around combing over the shivering Shaggy cradling Scooby and the completely dumbfounded Daphne. “Do you know any way we can lose them!?” Fred sharply spun around a corner, throwing all of them into the opposite wall of the van with a thud.

 

“Sorry!” He called. Velma groaned.  

 

Shaggy jerked to attention grabbing his face, teeth chattering. “Like, zoinks! L-L-Like, I mean there's a hidden trail through the woods that leads all the way to Hamishville!”

 

A megaphone blared behind them. “This is the police! Pull over immediately!” Deputy Jones’ voiced roared. “I repeat! Frederick Herman! Pull over your vehicle immediately!”  Shaggy yanked his shirt over his face. Daphne stared emptily out the window.

 

Velma's head snapped towards Shaggy. “Where!?” Shaggy jolted.

 

“Like! North of the s-shore line, man!” Shaggy stuttered. Scooby whined. Fred nodded, hand visibly shakey on the steering wheel.

“Back towards the shore?!” Fred’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the clutch.  
  
“The deputy sheriff is right on our tail, we have to shake him!” Velma called.  
  
“I have an idea! Hang on gang!” Fred yelled. Shaggy and Velma braced themselves, Velma also grabbing a disassociating Daphne’s collar.

 

Fred wrenched the wheel. Jerked the clutch. The wheels screeched, as the van spun around. The entire van leaned horribly, velma and shaggy hanging onto the ceiling and walls for dear life. Shaggy Screamed, Scooby wailed. The van made a full 180 degree spin, facing the oncoming police car, sirens surging. The van leapt into action. Screaming back down the road it just came from. They shot passed Deputy jones, who slammed on the breaks. Screeching to a halt.

Shaggy's face was turning the same colour as his shirt. The van sped down the road.

 

“Quick! Go down the side streets, you'll lose him quicker!” Velma gripped the headrest of the front seat. Fred nodded. Spinning the wheel into action. The tore down the closest side street. Then another, and then another. Fred seemed to be spinning the wheel every few seconds. The sirens faded into the distance.

 

The van slowed down.

 

Before they knew it they were rattling down a deserted street under an amber setting sun. Velma and Shaggy loosened their grips on whatever they were clinging onto to. Fred exhaled deeply. “So… we still going to that trail thing?” he joked.

Velma looked at him in disbelief. “ Fred, you're the son of the Deputy Sheriff! Shaggy is his new arch enemy, destroying a draft card can get you 5 years in jail or worse, the town’s vicar's daughter publically egged you on, you and shaggy are probably getting sodomy charges, and my name was on the top of every single protest pamphlet. I don’t know about you Fred. But I don’t think we can simply lay low and pretend like none of that just happened.”

 

“But I picked Shaggy by mistake back there, though!” Fred said. “I was going for Daph.”

 

“Wait! Like, what?” Shaggy sat up.

 

“Look.You're already publically a draft dodger, Fred. I don't think they're going to care whether you’re actually a homosexual or not too! We're going to have to skip town and who knows when we can come back at this rate” The van went eerily quiet. The spluttering of the engine uncomfortably loud.

 

Daphne jumped up, the present crashing down on her like a runaway truck.

 

“I just publically went against Deputy sheriff…” Daphne breathed, the colour in her face drained. Her jaw went un-feminely slack. “I just ran away from the police…”  

 

Velma shot her a quick glance, “And Welcome back to planet earth.” she said dryly. She turned back to Fred. “Look. I don't like it either, fred, but we can't stay here. I don't know if you could tell, but police aren't exactly knitting jumpers and writing poetry for us protesters, hippies, and draft dodgers right now!”

 

“Like! What are we going to do, man! Shaggy gasped.

 

“Find Shaggy's secret trail and start the drive Hamishville. We can focus on the other stuff later!” Velma explained. Shaggy gulped, Fred stared at the road harder.

 

The tide softly receded off the ripped up shores, accompanied only by the soft caroling of seagulls and whispering trees. The van rolled along the salt weathered roads to the north side of the coast. Up towards the long stretch of forest that marked Sandpine coast’s Border, before it spilt onto its grey oily shores. Daphne stared up at its familiar towering pines through the van’s windows. As a kid she thought these woods were full of magic and mysteries. She used to wriggle out of her mother’s grasp on the beach, just to sprint up to its salt filtered leaf littered earth. It was one of those woods that seemed to ooze secrets. And those leafy giants reaching down to the jagged rubbishy shores used to fill her with so much wonder when she was young.  
  
But today. She was squatting in the back of a hippy van. escaped from the police. With an elderly great dane, loathed pamphlet pusher, best friend draft dodger, and one scraggly lanky hippy. These towering pines seemed to choke in on her today. Daphne pursed her lips.

 

The van disappeared down the secret trail. Leaving Sandpine coast behind.


	2. Chapter 2

#  Chapter 2

 

The soothing sounds of waves coaxed Daphne into a deeper sleep. She could almost hear the soft fluttering of leaves and the twittering of bird outside her window. Albeit louder than usual. Her conscious ebbed like the grey waves in the autumn swells, salt tickled her nose, and a lazy morning sun caressed her fine features. She could barely feel the hard bed beneath her, and something soft and slightly course pressed into her side. She was dead tired, but she lulled herself into a deeper sleep. Her alarm hadn't rung yet. She could sleep for maybe a few more hours. She smiled to herself a little. 

 

It was a morning like no other.

 

A snore shattered through her head. 

 

Daphne's eyes flew open. And reality crashed over her body like a flood. Her eyes twitched, Dry and aching, her right side felt battered and bruised, her clothes felt dishevelled and gross. And right before her face, wrapped in her arms, was the gaping snoring maw of one sleeping Velma Dinkley.

 

Her blood turned to ice. She shot backwards, into the van wall. Her head cracking against the metal with an echoing bang. 

 

“SHIT!” She grabbed the back of her head. Pain searing across her skull. She didn’t know what hurt more, her head or the unlady like words she just shouted.   
  
It was a rude awakening, her heart hammered against her ribcage, and she felt her skin crawl. It wasn’t her fault, she grabbed things when she was asleep. It was a bad habit. Usually pillows, or blankets, or doonas. And today Velma Dinkley. She felt like scrubbing herself from head to toe. Velma however began to slowly stir, and this sent Daphne’s stomach to plunged into dread. Her mind fogged up as always. This couldn’t get any worse.     
  
“I, uh , sorry, I wasn’t-” She stammed. She choked the words out, her mind too groggy to deal with Velma Dinkley this early in the morning. She could almost hear her mother correcting her over that sentence 'Dalhne Blake, I would rather a heart attack than a daughter who spoke like a commoner’.    
  
Velma rose, and Daphne was given her first mercy of the day. Velma Dinkley stared two inches beyond her nose, fumbling for her glasses like a reanimated corpse. She was not a morning person. And she didn't even notice Daphne's half opened mouth as she stumbled out the back of the van. Daphne grabbed her head and sighed heavily.    
  
That Was one less thing she had to worry about this morning, but she could already feel the memories crash in like a storm over her sleepy brain. She guessed she could only count on so many mercies in one dayz and she winced as the events of yesterday rolled in. 

 

It didn't feel real. It just didn't click with her. The protest, shaggy, the police, her thinking for a brief moment Freddie might be a homosexual, Freddie pulling out that driving from absolutely nowhere. It made her almost feel like she was floating in a dream.    
  


She felt stupid for this: but she hoped that had all been a dream. Because who knew you could wake up in your soften silken sheets one day and in day old grimy clothes in a BMW camper van the next? As if her entire world had been wrenched from under her feet. It left her feeling cold, shivery, and exposed. As if the very sea itself might creep up and steal her away for her sins. 

 

But yesterday sat in the back of her mind  like it was one giant block. A wall which she couldn't club over, heck, she could barely even see the bloody wall. She was Daphne Blake, she was better than this, she was raised with heritage, with history, with a big house and respectable family, a weekly church, and lovely clothes. She wished her lip quivered, her eyes bawled, her voice shake, anything! But she was just numb, and cold, and stupid, and afraid.  

 

She at least  wanted some reaction. Everyone had a reaction. People said that things shook them to the core, plunged their hearts to ice, made them weep in their skins, made their knees rattle like windows in a storm.

 

Nobody ever wrote about having no reaction.

 

Daphne looked out the window. And saw trees.  

 

Even the dreaded Velma seemed to click into place yesterday, Velma! She almost gagged at the name, and the warmth that still lingered from this morning burnt like fire. How was she the action hero and Daphne was not. She was raised by her father, the vicar! A respected man who taught her good Christian values and etiquette, and yet here she was. Hiding in the back of a van for no reason, too scared to go outside and face the music, maybe because if she did that it would feel real. It made her wonder how Velma took it, she had woken up and rolled on like this was her day to day. And yesterday,  Velma seemed to melt into one of the commanders her uncle would whisper about. Someone who could turn the very sludge beneath her feet to stone with just her presence. She felt like she could keep the whole world together at the seams. And she hated that that was what made her feel safe. 

 

Velma Dinkley. She couldn't even remember what the Dinkleys did for a living.  

 

She was thinking too fast. The thoughts whirled around and around in her tired fizzing brain. She hadn't slept last night. She hadn't slept last night at all. The floor was hard, the van was alien to her, her makeup caked on her skin, and whenever she felt like she was ebbing onto the warm embrace of sleep Velma's earth shattering snores shook her from its longing grasp. 

 

She did eventually sleep. But for some reason she was plagued with vivid dreams of being chased around her father's church, by a giant turtleneck with a hunger for human flesh and a knack for spitting out pamphlets from its twisted flaming jaw.  

 

She shuddered at the nightmare. 

 

This was not her morning. 

 

Daphne forced the thoughts into the back of her head. One step in front of the other, Daphne. Just keep going on, she could deal with these emotions later. She breathed. She was better than this.    
  
Daphne marched out of the van.

 

She could see the forest for what if was in this morning golden haze. The trees were a little sparser, but knotted and old. And the path seemed newer and newer the further it lead into the woods. Shaggy had set up a little fire and was happily humming to himself as he poked a small tin kettle of pungent coffee he has hung over it. He seemed at peace here, humming a soft tune, absentmindedly fishing his long gangly fingers into a box of dog biscuit that he was oddly sharing with his dog. Like nothing was wrong with his world. 

 

Fred however did not seem in his element. If he was sitting any straighter on that stone he could be used as a ruler, his hands gripped his legs as he stared out into the woods. And Velma was so out of it she looked like she was from a different plane altogether, slumped cross-legged on the damp earth blankly staring into the flames. 

 

Shaggy gave her a beaming smile, and waved dismissively at Velma. 

 

“Morning! Oh, like, don't mind old Velms there. She's always a little out of it until she's had her morning coffee” Shaggy rattled a small tin of instant coffee by his side, Scooby looked at it expectantly.

 

“Okay.” She peeled her gaze away from Velma. “So. Nor- Shaggy.” She smoothed out the creases on her dress. She took a deep breath.  “Where are we going from here?” 

 

Shaggy absentmindedly scratched the soul patch on his chin. “Like, there's a small colony a few miles further up, man. They can probably fix us up with some clothes and a bite to eat, and then, like, we do what Velma said and go to Hamishville.”

 

Fred frowned. “A colony?”

 

“Yeah. It's, like, real groovy, Fred. Like, there's a whole lot of guys who live totally off the grid.”

 

The kettle began to boil. Velma's eyes lit up.

  
  


*

  
  


The van bumped and rattled along the bumpy unofficial trail. It was a lot smoother the further they got from Sandpine Coast, but it didn’t stop the the van lurching wildly whenever the wheels caught on the occasional stray root or rock. Daphne spent the entire time trying to make her hair a little more presentable by combing through it with her fingers. They were on their way to a colony, she had to at least look presentable. It didn't work.  

 

Velma finally looked alive after her pungent poisoned broth she called coffee.it was incredibly what difference a little mug could do.  She now chatted forwardly with Shaggy about the political institutions and outs of the Vietnam war that was completely lost on her. Daphne didn't join of course, her thoughts were still swimming as much as she pushed them down. So just tried to look away from her as much as humanly possible. For her own sanity.    
  
Fred drove on peacefully, the news crackling softly over the radio. She distracted herself with it. She knew that Fred had put it on this chanel for her, she liked the news. She couldn’t help herself, so much seemed to be happening around her. But of course she tried to limit herself to respectable media like popular T.V programs and fashion catalogues, like her mother taught her. But she still couldn’t help herself when she heard the news seep through a nearby radio, she hoped she’ll grow out of it soon.    
  
“Police have still not been able to find the whereabouts of Thomas Baker, who was filed missing this Thursday morning by his employer. Thomas Baker marks the tenth disappearance in the area this month and police urge anyone with information to come forwards...” Daphne leaned towards the radio but Fred's voice rattled her out of her concentration. 

 

“So… I've been meaning to ask, Shaggy?” Fred started, shifting his hands on the steering wheel nervously.

 

Shaggy looked over his shoulder. “Like, yeah, man?”

 

“...At the Vietnam protest, when I accidentally grabbed you … why did you go along with it?” Fred asked. The van went a little silent, expect for the scratchy sound of Shaggy rubbing his stubble. 

 

“Like. What do you mean?”

 

“When I accidentally grabbed you when I was telling my pops who I was in ...love with. Why did you just… go along with it?” 

 

“Oh, like I thought you were being serious man.” Shaggy shrugged. 

 

Fred nearly jerked the wheel. The Van swerved. Fred jerked it back onto the road, spinning around. 

 

“Wait, what?”

 

“Like, I thought you had, fallen in love with me the night before or something, man.” Shaggy shrugged. “...I may have had a wild thursday night. Like, it could’ve happened, man.” Scooby rested his jaw on Shaggy's leg. 

 

“And you were ok with that?” 

 

“well,Like, of course man. I'm like, totally pansexual” Shaggy gave a crooked effortless smile.  

 

“Pan…?” 

 

“It means he likes all genders, Frederick.” Velma sighed. 

 

“Like, yeah, man, I've fallen for all kinds of people.” shaggy said proudly, gesturing with a grand wave. “and like, you're totally my type, dude.” he added. Fred choked, the van knocked to the left. He quickly yanked it on course, clearing his throat. He stared forwards for a few seconds. 

 

The van remained silent for a couple of painful seconds. 

 

Velma scowled. 

 

Fred cleared his throat. 

 

“Did… you know about this, Velma?” 

 

Velma sighed. “How did you think we know eachother?” she snapped dryly. Fred’s lips tightened. Daphne could almost hear his heart race. She could hear Fred's grip tighten on the steering wheel, and the eventual drumming of his fingers against it. 

 

Shaggy spun around to face Fred in the mirror, his eyes creased in worry. “That’s not, like, going to be a problem Fred buddy?’ 

 

Fred jolted. “What? No! Of course not!  Everything's fine! That's totally fine!” He smiled too widely. Shaggy didn't seem to notice though  his face melted back into a relaxed smile, and he happily laid back in his seat. Fred cleared his throat awkwardly,  he shook his head a little as the van rolled into up to a small cluster of wooden huts overlooking a shaded sandy cove. He slapped the steering wheel. 

 

“Ummm…. Alright gang! We're here!” He said too quickly. He leapt out of the van, slamming the door behind him. Shaggy scratched his soul patch.

 

“you know. I feel like I'm, like, forgetting something man…” he muttered. Daphne rolled out the back doors and swun past the cool painted side of the van. The wind was soft. The sounds of the shore line were pleasant. She almost felt although she was home again. On the polished wooden floors and plush carpets of her parents house as the windows looked over the lulling waves.

 

the colony itself was rather pleasant. It was numerous tents and around 30 or so quaint wooden cabins on stilts spilling from the rocky woods down to the sheltered calming cove the village seemed to wrap around. There were no roads up here, and she could here the soft strum of a guitar and friendly chatter from within. It looked peaceful. And that was something that Daphne was long overdue. 

 

She trotted up to Fred, he stood straight as a pillar looking over the village. It was almost as if things had returned to the natural order, a down to earth normal location, and her talking to Freddie. It was the anchor to the whirlpool of her week so far. But as she went to talk to him she stopped, Fred was blankly staring ahead, the tips of his ears a deep shade of pink. And when Daphne followed his gaze, she stopped too. 

 

Shaggy bumble passed them. “Oh, yeah! Like, I hope you're not like, prudes or something, man.” He said brightly. 

 

Two of the colony's inhabitants glided up to meet them, a man and a woman with curious yet friendly expressions. The man had thick curly black hair that swooped down to his waist and a cigarette dangling from his lips, and the woman had a mane of Auburn red hair pulled into a messy braid with a ditzy smile. But their semi interesting hair wasn't what caught Fred and Daphne's attention. 

 

They were both completely nude.   

 

Shaggy lanked up next to them, his arms open wide. “Like, Dusk, Greg! I haven't seen you in like, so long man!” The two nudists pulled him into a generous hug that Shaggy seemed completely unphased by. Be as he pulled away from the couple, his expression swiftly fell. Shaggy scratched his head nervously. “Yeah, like…. we need a little help man, we were at a peace protest and, like, these cops, like,  totally crashed it...!” The woman stopped him with a tut tut and a wave. 

 

“Say no more. We've had our fair share of peace  protests gone wrong, Shaggy” she smiled. “We always keep spare food and clothes around for other protestors in need” shaggy smiled in relief. He beckoned Scooby to his side. 

 

“Like, thanks, Dusk. We're kind of in a tight spot.” 

 

Dusk waved at him dismissively and turned to the three frozen people in front of her. It made Daphne's brain kick into gear, even if it was to quickly turn her head to avert her gaze. Dusk seemed completely unphased by this, as much as she was unphased by her own nudity. “I'll get these two girls set up with some clothing, Greg, you take the pretty one” she laughed. Greg laughed along too, striding up to Fred and firmly grasping his shoulders.

 

“Come, let's get you fitted up” he laughed heartily. His body heaved with each chuckle. Which made an extremely uncomfortable image for everybody, especially Fred who was right in front of him and holding his breath so strongly he looked like he might implode. He gave Daphne pleading eyes as Greg carted him, Shaggy and Scooby away. But Daphne had bigger problems on her hands. She was stuck here, with Velma, and the absence of Fred and Shaggy only made her mind all the more foggier. 

 

Dusk completely oblivious to Daphne's peril, looped her arms through the crooks of their very rigid elbows. The touch of bare skin making her mind short circuit, and heart race. Velma didn't look that much better either, staring strongly away from their naked companion. Dusk beamed. “It looks like it's just the three of us, then!” She laughed a laugh that sounded like chimes and glitter. It made Daphne's head swim even more. 

 

Dusk lead them through the maze of tents, cabins, and naked swarms of people. Daphne's mind racing a million miles to nowhere the entire way there. She was walking like a mannequin, so rigidly that Dusk kindly laughed once or twice telling her to settle down. But she couldn't settle down. How could she? She was walking through a maze of very naked people, with a very distracting Velma Dinkley, being marched away by a very naked giggly hippy. 

 

She felt horribly exposed. And she wasn't even the naked one here. 

 

Her thoughts kept circling back to her father. Probably writing a sermon in the gothic black leather armchair he had in front of the fire. What would he say if he saw her now, walking among naked men besides Fred, and outside of marriage on top of that. Her entire face felt aflamed. Alfamed with every sin her father could count on his gnarled biblical hands. She logically knew he couldn't see her now, but she could almost feel his eyes upon her. As if he was all seeing. 

 

After a few minutes of weaving through the maze of nudity, tents, and lovely houses, Dusk finally steered them up to a weather beaten cabin by the shore. Beads hanging from its open door, and a large array of colourful blankets and candles lay inside. Daphne made a break for it, almost jogging inside. Pressing herself to the cabin wall to fan her beetroot face to gain at least some dignity. Velma followed awkwardly with Dusk. 

 

Dusk giggled again when she saw Daphne fussing with her face. “I see this is your first nudist colony” Dusk walked over to a small chest of clothes in the corner of the cabin, some of the only furniture she apparently owned. Daphne made sure to look away as she rummaged for a short while, before finally retrieving a large pile of clothes she proudly placed in front of them. “Pick as many of these as you need.” she beamed proudly. Daphne almost sighed in relief. It was a small thing, but in this horrible whirlwind of two days, this was something that was finally familiar. Clothing. She would’ve dived for the pile if it wasn’t an unlady thing to do. But it seemed like the beacon of last week, a small thing that made everything seem right in the world, she knew it sounded stupid. She fished through the clothing as Dusk smiled on. But, in the moment she lift the first garment, her mood completely fell. She should’ve expected this. But everything was long floating fabrics, horribly hand tie dyed or covered with more flowers than a hayfever patient's worst nightmares. They weren't necessarily bad, but they were definitely… hippy.

 

“they're ...lovely” she squeaked. 

 

Velma cocked an eyebrow at it. “I can't tell if that's clothing, or an acid trip in a small Norwegian tulip field” she said dryly. 

 

Strangely enough, Dusk smiled at this. At this point Daphne wasn't sure if this woman was physically capable of frowning. “They’ll fit you well” She said. She almost floated towards the door, she spun around as she hit the bead curtain, the beads rattling almost in tune with her bubbling laughter. “I'll go check on the boys and breakfast. I'll leave you two to get dressed” and with that she seemed to melt away. Like the bubbly ghost that she was.  Leaving Daphne very much alone with one Velma Dinkley. Daphne didn't know she could miss the presence of a naked woman so badly. But the chilling sudden void where she once was and the imposing being that was Velma crashed down around her ears. Her brain felt foggy again. She hated Velma Dinkley. 

 

Velma seemed to barely notice Dusk leaving, glaring into the rainbow mound of fabric. She managed to pick out the most practical, orange and brown clothing she could find and sighed. “well, I guess this beats wearing day old clothes” she muttered. She yanked her jumper over her ears and Daphne's mind went blank. She snatched up a pile of acceptable clothing, and backed away towards the bead curtain. 

 

“I'll just wait out here until you're done” she said. She spun around and ducked around the door, the bead curtain clattering behind her. She could hear Velma mutter something behind her. But, the moment she spilt out the door to the whispering tides of the cove, she felt the fogginess in her head melt away a little. She let out a breath. Of course out of all the people she had to go on the run with it had to be Velma bloody Dinkley. She loathed every second with her. 

 

She took her turn to get changed shortly after that, then followed Dusk with arms of clothes to the nudist breakfast. 

 

This was definitely not her morning. 

  
  


*

  
  


After a strange breakfast and much needed supplies the van bumbled quietly down the sun baked winding forest road between Sandpines coast and Hamishville. Fred and Velma looked a little shell shocked, Shaggy petted Scooby contently, Daphne was asleep. 

 

But no longer than 10  minutes into their freedom from the nudists. Sirens erupted from behind them. Shaggy almost jumped from his seat, Scooby who was resting his head on his knees gave him an offended glare. 

 

“It's, like, the police, man!” Shaggy yelped. Fred frowned at his rear view mirror. 

 

“Don't worry gang, these guys don't look like they're from Sandpine. I'll handle this” 

 

“You'll handle this?” Velma cocked an eyebrow. “The last time you encountered the police you accidentally put yourself on a watch list for sodomy” she dryly murmured. “Shouldn't we be using our resident sweet taller for something like this” She pointed at a slightly snoring slouched over Daphne, currently hugging a small pile of clothes. 

 

Fred shook his head. He calmly pulled the car over and straightened his new floral smock. “Well, Daph is fast asleep right now... So I'm all we have” Fred jolted, “uh, not that you two aren't good at talking. You're just a little uh...”

 

“Snarky and a stoner hippy” Velma suggested sarcastically.

 

“Exactly!” Fred said. Velma squinted. He rolled down his window. “Alright, here they come.” He cleared his throat. 

 

The sounds of thick soled boots could be heard from outside as a man stomped around the side of the van, chains jangling alongside him. And they all could’ve sworn that he was tapping his baton against the vans side as he strolled up to Fred’s window. He rested his arm on the door and leaned in, towering over a gulping Fred with a thick aggressive moustache and visor like sunglasses under a wide brimmed hat. The policeman cocked a bushy eyebrow. Fred began to sweat. The cop gave him and everyone in the van a long uncomfortable sweep of his gaze. He clicked his tongue. 

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“Um, pardon officer “ Fred squeaked.    
  
“I said. Where are you going?” He growled. Fred straightened uncomfortably in his seat.    
  
‘Hamishville.”

 

“Hamishville?” The cop lent further in, shifting his glasses, Fred cowered beneath his shielded glare. “Son. I don’t know how Sandpine coast runs itself.” He adjusted his shades. “But, Hamishville is a respectable town full of respectable folk. If you’re thinking of bringing your hippy shit into there you must surely mistaken.” 

 

“No, wait! This is a misunderstanding, officer. We're not hippies at all, just a couple of… college kids enjoying the weekend!” Fred smiled uncomfortably wide. 

 

“I'm a hippy” Shaggy raise his hand, Velma buried her face in her hand and sighed. The cop ignored him. But, if they could see his eyes behind the glasses, they could probably see he was rolling them. He gave a grand wave from Fred to Daphne, Shaggy, and Velma, all in their new floral and tie dye clothing from the colony. He then pointed slowly and menacingly at the van itself, it's bright orange lively flowers still scattering it's dusty blue and lime green sides. He gestured for an uncomfortably long time, and lent back into the van, Glaring at Fred, his voice dropped dangerously low. 

 

“Do you take me for an idiot.” He growled. Fred jumped a little and shook his head. “Because son, what I see, is a group of tie dye hippies in a bright floral van leaving a town that just had a massive anti war mob that had to be broken up for disturbing the peace and horrendous draft vandalisations. Who are telling me, funnilly enough, that they are not hippies” He growled. “Now tell me son. Do. You. Take. Me. For. An Idiot.” He scowled. Fred shook his head profusely. The cop leant out of the window, hooking a thumb into his belt. “Then, son. I kindly suggest, you turn your van around and go back where you came from. As an act of mercy. Or do I need to call the Deputy of Sandpine coast to come and get you himself” he spat. Fred jumped, his brow profusely sweating. “Now, that got you squirming.” He gave Fred a strong stare. “Turn around, son.”    
  
Fred gave a panicked nod, flicking the engine around, The cop glaring through the windows as they sped back towards Sandpine coast. The van fell silent, only the distant murmurings of a far away ocean and a rattling engine their only company. 

 

Velma cut through the overbearing quiet.    
  
“Well. That went well.” Velma said. 

 

Fred gripped the steering wheel. “I can’t believe he thought we were hippies!”   
  
“You’re more of a lost cause than I thought then.” Velma said snidely. “So. Where are we going to now?”   
  
“Well, I guess Sandp-”   
  
“Not Sandpine coast.”    
  
The van drifted to back towards the small opening that marked the hidden road to the nudist colony. Fred pulled the van into it, rattling along the makeshift road until they were fairly out of site. He pulled over, the rattling of the engine horribly absent. “Time to regroup gang!” He announced.  Velma sighed heavily.    
  
“Daphne!” She yelled, Daphne startled awake, bags under her eyes.    
  
“Wh-what did I miss?” Her eyes slowly pulling into focus.    
  
“Oh, you know. Just Fred dooming us to police attention once again. The usual.’ Velma sighed.    
  
“Like, how are we going to get to Hamishville now, man?” Shaggy said. Velma rubbed her eyes behind her glasses.    
  
“Probably not this way after you told the officer you were a hippy.”    
  
Daphne rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she looked over to Fred. “What happened?”    
  
Fred went to speak but Velma cut him off. “We got intercepted by a police officer, who after taking one look at our van and outfits decided we were hippies and told us to turn around or he’ll call Sandpine’s deputy to take us back in a police wagon.” Daphne’s eyes went wide.    
  
Fred spun around. “He didn’t say that!”    
  
“It was heavily implied, Fred.” Velma sighed. Daphne shifted uncomfortably, she avoided Velma’s eye. The gaze feeling like it bore through her skin.    
  
“So, we need to… disguise the van?” Daphne asked. She shrunk a little under Velma’s stare. Velma thought for a moment. Her mind still spinning from a rude awakening.    
  
“That… might actually be a good idea.” Velma said eventually. Daphne straightened up, for some reason feeling a little less tense.    
  
Shaggy frowned, still petting Scooby absentmindedly. “But, like… Disguise the van with what?” He, scratched his soul patch. He jolted and spun around, scrounging through the crates around them, sifting through clothes and toiletries. Daphne gave him a puzzled look as he scatter what was once Beatles  stacked supplies around the van. He finally found what he was looking for, triumphantly lifting it up in front of him. A fairly large tin of bright orange paint, and a brush. “Thought they might’ve slipped in one of these.” He said proudly. Velma lifted an eyebrow. “You never know when you’re going to have to make a last minute protest sign” He shrugged.    
  
“But there isn’t enough for the whole van!” Fred interjected.   
  
“Mysteries!” Daphne shouted. Everyone froze and turned to her, Daphne cover her mouth.    
  
“Maybe the nudist colony threw you around more than I thought.” Velma retorted. Daphne could feel her cheeks tinting pink again.    
  
“No, I mean. On the radio. There looking for people with information on all those missing people. Maybe we can disguise ourselves as college students investigating it?” She suggested. Velma thought for a little, Shaggy scratched his head. Scooby took a nap. 

 

“You know Daphne…. That might just actually work. I didn't  realise you listened to the news.” Velma admitted. She turned back to Fred. “ But what are we going to do about the Police officer?”    
  
Fred finally piped up form the driver’s seat. “All the police by the coast change shifts for patrol at 12:30, maybe we could try again with a new officer. And Daphne here is a great convicer!”   
  
“Aww, thank you Freddie” Daphne smiled, Fred gave her the thumbs up. Velma adjusted her glasses.    
  
“Well. What do we have to loose.”    
  
  


 

*

  
  


It was 12:47, and the van rattled back up the sun scorched road to Hamishville. The van was thick with tension, as if everyone has sucked out all the air to hold their breaths. It made the engine uncomfortably load, and the swaying of the trees around absolutely ear shattering. 

 

Shaggy had actually done a great job on the sides of the van, considering all those protest signs he makes and that he painted the van himself those skills seemed to finally come in handy. They had all decided to write up “The mystery machine” it was bland enough not to be recognisable and fitted well enough. And now, that the paint was dry and Daphne was fairly awake. They waited for the inevitable sirens that will test their disguise and plan. 

 

And the sirens did come, they cut through the silence of the van like a knife and Fred calmly pulled over. He gave Daphne a look and they listened to the footsteps coming to the window. They were different this time, more hurried. Maybe that was a good sign.

 

A face stuck itself through the vans window and everyone held their breath, sunglasses, a wide brim hat, but no moustache. They were in luck. 

 

“Afternoon, what do you lot think you're doing” the cop asked. Fred straightened a little, clearly panicked, he opened his mouth instinctually to speak but Daphne cut him off. 

 

“Good afternoon officer, so glad you've pulled us over.” The cop jumped and spun towards daphne, who was politley leaning over the back of the front seat. “We're a couple of college kids who travel the coast investigating mysteries. We were wondering if this was the right way to Hamishville? We're not the best with maps.” Velma lifted her eyebrow at her in protest. The officer didn't notice this, he stared at her blankly, leaning out of the van window and taking a long longer at the orange lettering on the side of the van. 

 

“Um, yes, yes you are.” He muttered, returning to the window. “You kids are… mystery solvers?”

 

“Absolutely, we try and pick up a few small mysteries here and there, we get around. Actually I was wondering if you can help us, I heard on the radio that there was a recent disappearances around here?” Velma looked at Daphne in disbelief. The cop seemed to chew on his cheek. Daphne's heart hammered against her ribcage. Her veins were turning to ice, but she kept going. She was composed, she was a Blake!

 

“That is correct.”

 

“Well, we decided to move on to smaller mysteries, and we just couldn't resist a string of unsolvable innocent disappearances, and an abandoned car. And I'm sure such fine gentlemen as yourself probably have other things on you plate right now.”

 

“Why yes, we’re quite busy this time of year. Lots of assaults, accidents, and neighbours shooting neighbours who have got on their nerves recently…”

 

Saphne smiled sweetly. “What harm can another pair of eyes do for a look out for a missing man for our mystery… report?” Daphne smiled a winning smile. Shaggy nearly whistled, Velma looked vaguely impressed. The office scratched his head. He shrugged. 

 

“Sure… just don't get in the way, and be careful. You lot look like a lot of hippies, and we don't like those kinds of people in these parts” he stood away from the window and let them through. The van shot forwards. Everyone took a short moment to breathe, Daphne numbly sat down, her pulse was going a mile a minute, she hoped lying to authorities wasn't going to become a common past time for her.  her entire body felt racked with guilt. 

 

Shaggy let out a low whistle. 

 

Velma adjusted her glasses. “Wow Daph, who knew a perfect girl like you could lie about that? That was impressive!” 

 

Fred beamed from the driver's seat. “Daphne could out sweet talk a Lollie salesman!”

 

Daphne took a deep breath. And tried to steady her nerves. Numbly staring at the wall. They did it, now they just had to get to Hamishville. And from there they would figure out what to do next. The radio crackled on, the sweet sounds of the newscaster her only reward. 

 

The van rattled on. They finally made their way to Hamishville.


	3. Chapter 3

#  Chapter 3

  
  
  


It was thursday evening. The cabin violently shook in the breeze. The wind clawed at the thin windows like an unfathomable beast, and the wooden boards groaned like dying men. It was a house so weathered, and so brittle, it was almost waiting for the right gust of wind to rip its entire exterior from its rotting and termite infested frame. Yet the insides of this carcass of a house were teeming with life. As messy as the life was.

 

A small man scurried around the rubbish tip of an interior. Like a mouse in a field full of hawks, head spinning one way to another, swooping from one part of his house to the next. He scurried from junk pile to junk pile, sagging his rotting floor. He was obsessing over an obscene horde of antique lights and lamps scattered around the piles of electrical junk he called a home. It looked like a horrible accident between a rubbish truck and a lights and fitting delivery van. Everything broken and dirty except for one pristine sensible bank calendar, the days crossed out until the Thursday. The house was a mess. Yet the man didn't mind at all, he lived in this filth, dirt streaking his greying hollow skin. Eyes quick like a younger man  trapped in physical horror, he couldn't have been older than 50. He looked like a thrown out doll that had been stretched out of proportion. And this man was scared. Scared of the orange glow seeping ominously through his windows. Tapping the various bulbs and appliances plugged into their way too crowded sockets. As if doing so, was the only comfort he had. 

 

An obese sun began to sink below the horizon. And the wind screamed harder, like a screeching siren in the crashing waves below the cliff the house was perched on. The shutters on his windows clattered like war drums. The entire building groaned with the persistent crushing winds.  He clasped his hands over his ears. His eyes as large as saucers. 

 

And with a crack, his worst fears came to being, every light in his possession blinked. Once. On and off. Simultaneously. He stood, surrounded by blinding orange light. Shivering as if the lamps was shaking his brittle bones. 

 

Panic filled the old man's face, his eyes grew wider than they already were, his discoloured teeth chatter nearly as loudly as his tantruming shutters. 

 

He kicked into gear. In a blind panic, his breath hitched, his eyes would’ve watered if they were not so dry. He broke toward a particular pile of junk. Rustling through it desperately. Chucking old  tins and rags left and right. He stuck his arms into particularly rotted box, his gangly hands closing in on a rusty revolver. He shakily checked the ammunition. Full. The gun rattling like leaves to his quivering limbs, he pulled it towards his skeletal chest. The fireworks of lights around him began to flicker more aggressively, in tune, all at once, almost as if it was in time with a drum. 

 

And the drum beat was getting faster. 

 

The man yelped and darted to a saggy table that held most of his electrical belongings. The lights flickered harder. 

 

He dove underneath the table, yanking at the oily rotting rug. 

 

On, off, on. the lights began to flicker constantly, every second. The man's quivery fingers finally brushed the rug away, revealing a small handle to a hatch. He tugged it upwards.

 

The lights began to strobe, flickering faster than the eye could see, bulbs began to burst, his toaster began to shake. The wind howled. The sea roared.    
  
The man yanked the hatch open, revealing a ladder stretching into the dark below. He could hear the wind screaming now, and steps creak methodically on his front porch.    
  
The man scrambled down the ladder. His front door began to creak on rusted hinges.  He slammed the hatch shut behind him. 

 

He held his shaky breath and watch as light filtered through his illuminated house to the dusty soulless basement below. The stale air and quiet stuffed his filthy ears, to the point where all he could hear was the knocking of his heart against his ribs, and the tapping of footsteps up above.    
  
He gripped his revolver to his chest. holding his breath.    
  
The footsteps padded on the rotting rug. 

 

The lights went out. 

  
  


*

  
  


People talk of nightmares that you cannot wake up from. 

 

Dreams of horrors so real that they shake you to your core, push into you reality, scrape at your very world until you scream a scream of ice. Nightmares so invasive and so real that when you wake they linger, linger in the front of your skull until your mind outruns the dark. Making your heart hammer and sweat bead, as you recall the monster,  the end of the world, or the loved one you thought just slipped from your mortal plane.

 

People talk of these dreams. Daphne hadn't known what that meant. 

 

Daphne didn't have many bad dreams. She once had one where she was chased by a cotton candy clown as a child. And often one where she's naked at school and her entire family and cohort throw her into demonic flames. Yet she had never had a vivid nightmare. But maybe this is what one felt like. Even if she was awake. 

 

Fred grumbled staring at the road, Velma had climbed into the passenger seat, pointing a dagger like finger at a map’s centre. They had been arguing for hours now. And their trip was 3 hours longer than it should’ve been. Shaggy had spent the entire time blocking his ears. For the amount of protests he attended he was surprisingly bad with conflict, especially with his peers. It was surprisingly sweet. 

“Fred, if you hadn't tried to take a stupid shortcut we would've made it to Hamishville hours ago!” Velma gave a pointed glare at Fred who defensively shrugged it off. 

 

“My dad has taken me here loads of times! I was certain that was the right way. And, relax, it's not like we went too far out of out way.” Fred smiled innocently. 

 

“We nearly ended up in a river Fred. A RIVER! And it took 2 HOURS for you to to let us stop and buy a damn map!” 

 

“Like, calm down Velma. There’s, like, no harm done.” Shaggy cowered beneath Velma’s disapproving gaze. 

 

“There would be no harm done if someone here could listen to directions!” Velma groaned. 

 

It was 4:28 as they wove the van through aggressively crimson autumn leaves. They fluttered down mercilessly, almost as if the world was raining fire, it made Daphne anxious as she stared out the windows, even is she was completely zoned out to the world.    
  
But almost as a means to snap her back to reality. The entire van lurched. Something bumping underneath their tires. The entire Van went quiet. Fred pulled over.    
  
“Did.. did we just run over something?” Daphne said groggily. The entire van looked between themselves. The wheels in their heads collectively turning. 

 

“Don't worry gang! Probably just a log!” Fred said warmly. But the gang did worry. And they all piled out of the van into the gentle evening autumn sun. The van doors slamming shut with a thunk.    
  
They all paused, this certainly wasn’t a log, and Daphne wasn’t even sure it could be roadkill. In the middle of the lane was a small brackish puddle, steely blue and opaque, and in it’s centre like a deserted desert island was a a few long bones, and what looked to be maybe part of a collar bone. To what animal she couldn’t entirely pin point, neither could the others. But her news filled, murder mystery mind entertained it being human. She decided it was deer bones.    
  
“Looks like a puddle of motor oil” Fred suggested.    
  
The others crowded around it, Fred stroked his square jaw, his brows knitted in confusion, Scooby sniffing at it intently. It was slightly luminescent, soft blue lights playing on all their faces. Velma was practically squatting next to it, she pulled a branch from nearby and poked at it scientifically. When she drew the stick up to her face, the weird goo dripped disgustingly down in long sticky strands. Velma watched it intently. And daphne couldn’t help but watch her, there was something about Velma’s mannerisms that she couldn’t figure out. Fred was simple, Shaggy was predictable, Scooby was a dog,  but there was something about Velma that unnerved her. About how when she tried to figure out something she would totally zone out into her own world, probably one full of books and musty pages. But there was something about her trying to figure something out that intrigued her, to the point where she couldn’t look away. She wasn’t sure why she was poking at it, measuring its consistency and texture, it almost looked like she pretending that she could figure it out. But really it was a deep curiosity, she wanted to know how it ticked. It made the weird pool make a little bit more sense if someone was trying to figure it out, rather than stare at it worriedly like the others.    
  
Daphne realised she was staring solely at Velma, she whipped her head away her cheeks heating slightly. She had to pretend she was trying to do something productive. She was a Blake. She better act like it. Her eyes swept instinctively over the dying grass by the roadside. In those books she respectfully restricted herself from reading there was always something in the grass nearby, like a hubcap, or a cigarette lighter, usually rubbish. But something glinted within behind the plants. In a half daze she instinctively went to grab it. Her dainty fingers closing around something cold and metallic. She realised too late that she probably should’ve checked what it was before she went and clasped her clean hand around it. But it was too late now as she pulled the object towards her face. And when she realised what it was she froze, nearly dropping it.   
  
It was something that her father had told her she should get used to. That any respectable man would have, that she shouldn't have as a respectable lady but her man should have. But that didn’t mean she liked them. Like they would explode in her face with the wrong glance. Daphne held a rusty revolver out in front of her. The cylinder half empty.    
  
Fred jogged up to her, whisking the gun from her hands. He checked it over, gently.  “This is pretty beat up. Been shot a few times too. Someone must've left it here a while ago” He nodded. “Probably doesn’t have anything to do with the puddle though” he shrugged. 

 

“What do we do with it?” Daphne asked. 

 

“I'll hang on to it. My dad taught me how to be responsible with guns so…”

 

“But, Fred-!”

 

“I know you don't like guns Daphne, but it's better with me than found by some stranger who doesn't know what he's doing.” He shook the remainder of the bullets into the palm of his hand. Sticking the bullets and gun in separate pockets. He was right. But, she still felt uneasy.    
  
Velma’s voice pierced through the air. “SHAGGY! YOUR DUMB DOG!”

 

“SCOOBY DOO! NO!” 

 

Daphne whirled around. Scooby had wandered over to the puddle while nobody was looking, and had begun slurping up the mysterious goo. Shaggy nearly dove over to him, wrapping arms around his grey neck, heaving him away . Scooby resisted, his paws padding into the metallic goop, happily lapping at the pool. Daphne and Fred jogged over, just as Velma had chucked her stick away and now was also trying to heave Scooby away. “Dammit, Shaggy. How is your elderly  dog so damn strong!” Velma yelled. 

 

“He's like, really into food!” Shaggy yelped back. He desperately hauled at his best friend's neck. Fred sprinted over, yanking Scooby by the collar, finally wrenching him from the pool. The dog growled. Daphne jogged behind, Fred tried to wrench open his jaws. 

 

“Come on, Scooby! You've gotta chuck it up!” Fred yelled. 

 

“Like! Why man” shaggy yelped. 

 

“If this is engine oil or anything like that, it'll kill him!” The dog clamped it's jaws shut. Trying to shake off Fred. Shaggy's face had gone white. But the dog wouldn’t budge, his jaw would not open.  Velma leapt into action, she grabbed the dog around the waist, heaving it up. 

 

“Vet. Fred, how quick can you get us to a vet!” Velma commanded. Fred nearly leapt for the driver's seat, Velma and Shaggy heaved Scooby into the back of the van, Daphne clambered in after them.

 

Fred revved the engine, slamming on the accelerator. “Hang on, Scooby!”

  
  
  


*

 

Fred’s driving these days never failed to shake Daphne. 

 

They all huddled into the small tiled room. It was clinical this vet, black and white posters of dogs and cats, sickly green floor tiles and walls, and a short quiet secretary behind the desk that probably wouldn’t even notice a bomb going off. They tried talking to her at the beginning. That didn’t really work.    
  
And all this steril walls and floors did not help them. Scooby was behind to large white doors, in some kind of veterinary surgical room. And they all huddled on the uncomfortably new blue and white material and aluminium chairs. The quietness was loud, the white lighting soulless, and everything seemed way too noticeable yet empty in the foyer. And as much as the secretary ignored them, Daphne felt watched, like she was under a limelight for an invisible audience. It made her skin crawl.    
  
Shaggy sobbed softly into his hands. Scooby had been together with him for most of his life teenage and young adult life. He wasn’t taking this well. Fred wrapped a strong arm across his shoulders, and Daphne tried to comfort him. But she couldn’t. She felt too guilty and she didn’t know why. Velma stared intently at the tiles, invisible gears turning in her head.   
  
“It’ll be ok Shaggy, we got to the vet really quickly. Scooby will be fine.” She tried reassuring him.    
  
“But, like, what if he’s not man! I know he’s old, but like, he’s the only family I have.” Daphne frowned at that. Now she couldn’t figure out what was sadder about this situation. 

 

The secretary snapped up from her magazine. “Hush!” she hissed. Daphne was wrong,  that secretary did notice things. She just didn't like them. Daphne looked down at her poorly tie dyed shirt. She didn't really blame her.   
  
The doors to the surgical theatre burst open, and Shaggy shot up. Not saying anything. Just standing. Quivering like a twiggy tree. The vet stalked up to him, Crooked nose and cold grey eyes, His face hidden beneath a greying beard that looked almost like it was dusted with snow. His steps echoed in the silent room. Perfectly polished oxfords clacking against the pristine tiles.  “Mr Rogers.” The vet addressed. Hearing Shaggy addressed formally felt a little strange. Shaggy stood straighter, wringing his hands, he gulped. “Your dog Scoobert is going to be fine.” he said, his face stone straight. He looked back to his clipboard, the vet barely moved, as if he was a mannequin, or as if he was animated on a shoestring budget. Shaggy went to talk but the vet cut him off, with a unnaturally smooth wave. “We checked over the contents of the stomach-”   
  
“What kind of compound was it? It definitely wasn’t organic-!” Velma started, but stopped abruptly with a stare from the vet. That was weird to Daphne. She had never seen Velma interrupted before.    
  
“The contents of your dog’s stomach was simply roadkill. We get a little bit of weird roadkill around these parts.” The vet looked down his crooked nose at Velma. “And I suggest you don’t let that wild imagination of yours run away with you, miss. It might make you look like a madwoman” The vet warned. Velma went quiet. “I take it that you four are visitors in Hamishville?” He looked up at Fred who beamed widely.    
  
“That would be correct, sir! I haven’t been to Hamishville in years.” Fred grinned. The vet gave him the same stoned face expression, but Daphne could have sworn there was a certain twitch to the corner of his mouth, a small gesture of friendliness, from maybe someone who had seen too much from the wars to react warmly to anything.    
  
“In that case, I hope you have a wonderful stay.” He replied. 

The surgical doors opened soon after, and a veterinary nurse trudged through with Scooby on a rope. The silence was instantly shattered as Shaggy broke away towards Scooby. Wrestling the hound into a hug. The nurse raised an eyebrow. 

 

Daphne pulled out her checkbook for the costs.    
  
  


  
  


*

  
  


Daphne shivered as the gang made their way to a nearby motel. Hamishville was disappointingly nothing like Sandpine Coast. Where Sandpine coast was sand swept and warm, Hamishville was muddy and desolate; If Sandpine was bustling and welcoming, here was judging and pristine. They were both smallish coastal towns, but Hamishville was certainly more sparse, with wheatfields cut into the forest that stretch out into the cold harsh night. Even the beach seemed different. For being only a few kilometres up the shore line, Sanpine spilt trees and all on a lazy silver swell, while Hamishville kept it’s thrashing waves at the bottom of spiky unforgiving cliffs.    
  
Daphne was starting to miss home. Her warm bed, dark mahogany floors, crackling fires, mother’s warm aromantic meals, and the soft puffing of her father’s pipe as he told her about how much of a respectable woman she was for the family. Never had she realised how warm that feeling was until she felt the cold air seep through her alien clothing as she made her way to a badly lit motel room over grimy slimy concrete. She wasn’t even allowed to share a room with Fred, she would admit that would have been improper. But she was longing for some familiar, Fred was her anchor. But here, in the 3 star cliffside hotel, she had to share a room again with Velma Dinkley. The snoring, pamphlet pushing, mind boggling Velma Dinkley. In a room that was so stained she couldn’t tell where the beige patterned sheets began and the stains stop. If they stopped. She could barely hate anything about the decor in this room. She was too tired, emotionally and physically, like all the sleep in the world couldn’t get her out of bed to this. What was tomorrow? Waking up to Velma Dinkley after so little sleep, Barely talking to Fred as she tries to nap, watch Fred drive like a stranger, not question the weird smell in the glove box of the mystery machine? Now she thought about it she was probably the first Blake to lie in a motel. Her father said motels were only for prostitutes and the morally corrupt. She wished she brought her own linen now. 

  
Daphne took the sagging bed close to the door. Velma took the one by the window. Shutting the rattling pane with a thunk. Daphne’s head felt full of wool again. When she finally slid into bed she pulled the blankets up to her chin, already forgetting her father’s warnings. She could over-felt Velma’s presence beside her, it burnt into the side of her face. So she tried to shut her eyes, shut it out, the flicker of the dodgy lamp bulb behind her, the wind battering against the window, or the worrying crashing of waves against cliff face.    
  
“There’s something off about this town” Velma’s voice shattered through her tired mind. Daphne scrambled into a sitting position. Velma had her glasses off, but rubbed her chin thoughfully. “Did you notice it?”   
  
“Did- did- me?” Daphne stuttered. She didn’t know why Velma was talking to her. And her mind was too boggled for this. It was more than enough to have to put up being in the same location as her. Velma made her head fuzzy, and got her stumbling like an idiot. She hated it.    
  
“You’re good at reading people, Daphne, much better than me, but there was no way that what Scooby ate was organic, even if that vet told me so. And if it was organic, it was definitely like nothing I had ever seen before.”    
  
Daphne stared harshly at the wall in front of her, her mind recalling the veterinary clinic. Did Velma really think she was good at reading people? She shook her head heavily. She didn’t care if she did, but it was weird to think that a dreaded person like her gave her any mind. It sent chills down her spine. She took a deep breath, recollecting her thoughts. “Well-” Now she thought about it. “I thought it was odd that he was lying. And the nurse and secretary… they treated us like we were things that they wanted to get rid of? Like we shouldn’t be there, but also like they didn’t want us to leave...” It wasn’t just the clinics lifeless interior, but for the entire time they were there, Daphne felt… watched and confused.    
  
“That’s odd.” Velma said thoughtfully. She didn’t even question it, what Daphne had said, Velma just stared down into her lap, her brain whirring in her skull. She felt… listened to… Daphne shook her head. “There is something definitely very wrong with this town.” Velma waited a few moments, her eyes darting, deep in thought. She jerked up, leaping out of her bed, she swiped her glasses off her bedside table and slammed them on her nose. Daphne backed away a bit under her covers. “Well, we said we were here to investigate a mystery didn’t we?” She said snidely. But her attitude felt a little different this time, almost as if Daphne was in on the joke rather than the butt of it. “They’re hiding something here, and I’m going to find out what it is. Are you in?”    
  
Daphne jolted, her mind swimming. Velma watched her, waiting for a response.   
  
“Look, Daphne. I know you’re the ‘perfect church girl’” Daphne winced, she didn’t know why, she heard those words as compliments all her life, but now the words almost felt full of venom. “But, I think it’s a bit too late to cling to that now.” Velma raised a judgemental eyebrow. “I saw you when that news broadcast was on the radio. You can’t say you’re not a little interested.” That tugged at Daphne. It felt wrong. Sleuthing, mysteries, an abandoned car, a rusty revolver, protests, the list of things that only a deviant woman would be involved with kept piling up. It gave her vertigo, it was too much, everything was too much, like there was so much going on that she couldn’t see it. A chaotic storm of fear and she was stuck in the middle. And yet her brain was numb, her mind was blank, she was a Blake. No, with all of this, could she be a Blake? That thought disappeared from her mind as soon as it was created.   
  
A meek “Yes” Fumbled from her mouth. Velma nodded proudly, before marching out the door. Presumably to wake up Fred and Shaggy about all this.    
  
Daphne just slipped beneath her covers. Pulling the blankets above her head. She hugged her pillow, and the churning current of her brain soothed to ripples as she fell asleep.   
  
Daphne dreamt of mahogany floors, and the peaceful church sermons of last week.


	4. Chapter 4

#  Chapter 4

  
  
  


It was probably around 7am or earlier. Daphne didn't care, she was groggy, they got to the motel at 11, sleeping at 12, and she was still battered from yesterday. She had at least showered, her make up long gone, her hair was brushed for the first time in two days.Which was something at least.  And now she slumped over on a cold metal bench top. Face to face with a stack of blueberry pancakes. 

 

Shaggy had called their first morning meeting at the diner near the motel. It too was fairly close to the cliff face, everything in this town seemed to be. Staring over a small grassy hill towards the endless sky and ocean beneath the rocks. This diner was pristine and new. Where the waitresses smiled when serving and hummed to the Christian hymns over the jukebox. It felt like what heaven would be like for a truckie.

 

But as she stooped over the way too clean benchtop looking at her perfect yet bland pancakes, she still was uncomfortable. The unfamiliar clothes and pristine tiles seemed cold and callous, even if today was rather warm. 

 

“So!” Shaggy beamed, Scooby cocking his head from the stop sign he was tied to outside. “like! Let our first mystery machine meeting begin, man!” He took a few seconds to wolf down his triple stack of pancakes, still chewing as he spoke. “So like, gang, what are we going to do?”

 

Fred squinted. “We can rely on Daph's money for maybe a few months. But if we can't go… if we can't go back for a while. We have to have a plan. I mean… do you want to stay together? What about college? Do we transfer? What about our parents? Our families? Our friends? I left my passport at home!!!” 

 

A coffee clacked down in front of Velma's drowsy eyes. She snapped it up, tipping it back in one long draw. Fred watched her with a quivering lip, Velma reshuffled her glasses.  “It's too early in the morning for this” Velma groaned.

 

Daphne put a hand on Fred’s shoulder “One thing at a time Freddie” she suggested. “I have enough money to support us for a while… for a long while…” she admitted. “But what do we do, right now?” 

 

Shaggy paused, fork halfway to his mouth. “like, first of all, gang… do we want to, like, you know… stick together?” He asked meekly, as if he didn't want to risk a possible answer. He quickly returned to shoveling down his pancakes again. 

 

Fred straightened his back, squaring his shoulders. “I don't see any reason for us leaving, like sure we don't entirely know eachother. But...” Fred drifted off, his brain nearly visabally wracking itself. Daphne piped up. As if someone else inside her was puppeting her weary bones. 

 

“Well, we're stronger together.” She suggested. Fred jolted up.

 

“Exactly, Daph! Just what I was thinking! We all got into a mess together, right?”

 

“Like, I guess, all we have right now is eachother, man! We can't go home, and like, we needed everyone's like skills to get here. So, like, we kinda need eachother, man! In more ways than one.” Shaggy started, getting more and more upright in his seat the more he went on. Daphne was waiting for inspirational music to start at any moment. Maybe a string instrument section or a-

 

“There's something fishy about all these disappearances, and that puddle yesterday.  I want to find out what's going on.” Velma interrupted. Shaggy stopped mid sentence, his jaw hinged open. Velma rubbed her eyes behind her glasses. 

 

Fred gawked. “We're just college kids Velma! We can't tamper with evidence or snoop around that's illegal-” 

 

“So was that protest. And I feel like there's something going on that the residents here won't tell us about. If we don't look into it, who will? Not to mention that Daphne convinced that officer that we were a mystery solving group. At this point it would be more suspicious if we didn't look into anything.” Velma said. She poked absently at her pancakes, Shaggy gulped, his eyes wide. “And why should our age stop us?”

 

Daphne didn't know why she said this, but her mouth jerked open before she could shut it. “and, well, those vets were very suspicious yesterday” she added. The rabbit hole just kept on going. She could almost feel herself tumbling down a pit, the eyes of her father burning into the back of her head. She just wanted to be home, to go to college everyday. But, she couldn't think about that. She couldn't think about anything. This didn't feel real. As much as her longing for home consequently didn’t feel real at times. But, yet again, Fred’s voice cracked through her train of thought.

 

“You too, Daph!?” Fred spluttered. “I knew you liked the news, but since when were you into all this stuff?!” 

 

“And, like, me and Scooby don't have any solving skills!” Shaggy gulped.

 

“Shaggy, your dog is basically a grade A sniffing hound as long as we don't let him eat anything. And Fred, you can drive like a mad man, and maybe your engineering degree could be of some use. Besides, you can't say you're not a little intrigued?” Velma said. 

 

Fred scratched the back of his perfect wavy blonde hair.  “I mean… I thought they were just acting nicely yesterday “ he muttered. 

 

“What about the puddle?” Velma strained. 

 

“Motor oil?”

 

“Then why did the vet say it was roadkill?!”

 

Fred paused, thinking, scratching his temple. “well, when you put it like that… I guess it does sound a little fishy.” That was Daphne's Freddie, always saw the best in everyone, even to a fault at times. Her father's words sunk into her firing brain. Fred was a respectable man, good with his hands, practical, well groomed. Her anchor in all this mayhem. 

 

“Like I don't know man! What if it's dangerous? Missing people sounds like, really bad!” Shaggy gulped. 

 

“It’s fine as long as we don't go anywhere stupid.” Velma groaned. 

 

“But, like! What if it's something like a group of serial killers!? Or a bunch of ghosts!?!?” Shaggy's teeth began to chatter. 

 

Velma let out a long sigh, massaging the bridge of her nose.

 

Slouching over her pancakes, she signalled the ever grinning waitress as a sign of defeat. “Another coffee please...”

  
  


*

  
  


They approached the sheriff's office with caution. They knew there was one officer who they already got on the bad side of, and they hoped to heaven above that they didn't run into him right now. 

 

The streets were not like Sandpine at all either. Cold concrete, and quiet that seemed to stretch to just behind your line of sight. It made Daphne's skin crawl, like she was exposed, like all this open nothingness was crashing in on her. Just like the cold gnashing waves crashed and clawed against those razor cliffs.

 

They pushed open the warm weathered wood of the sheriff's station. A little bell jingled overhead.

 

A squeak of a chair. The receptionist behind the beaten maple wooden desk peered at them queerly. One of those stares that made you second guess your breathing yourself. As if the brown and beige checked carpet stretched horizons between you and them. As if a spotlight had been thrust upon her to suck the very rest of their souls. Shaggy gulped, Velma gave a snarl, Fred looked to Daphne, the receptionist kept her lazer gaze rooting their feet  to the paper thin carpet itself. The desk desked on. 

 

Daphne cleared her throat lightly, composing herself. She was a respectable girl. She wasn't scared of receptionists. Calm, composed, and proper. That was the motto her father nearly breathed like air itself. Respectable women were that, and Blakes more so. This was second breathing to her. And she admitted, that the very act of  stepping step after step across the respectable carpet to the well worn and familiar desk was welcoming to her. As if the horribly tie dyed and floral clothing melted from her slender frame to the sunday best and girls fashion she knew so well. It was a well worn path. She ignored the small stirr in her stomach about the nature of her upcoming conversation. She wanted to bathe in this familiarity, even for a moment.  A mirage of respectability. Against her barely knowing why and what she was doing. 

 

“You folk got any business with the police?” The receptionist shifted her heavy tortoise shell glasses at her, clacking a pen against a yellow notepad.  

 

Daphne rested her folded hands on the desk, brushing a perfect curl behind her ear. “oh, I was wondering if you could help me,” she gave a composed smile. “I talked with quite a respectable young officer yesterday, about the few recent cases of missing persons in the area.”

 

“Oh. And you have information about them?” the receptionist squinted through her glasses at her. But, Daphne didn't miss a beat.

 

“We discussed us having a small look about the scene as part of our mystery documentation work. We just wondered if you could so kindly help us with speaking with an officer about that. We’re no intrusion” Daphne gave a sweet smile, and the receptionist shifted her glasses irritably. She mulled over the words for a few moments. 

 

After what seemed like forever, timed by the soft nervous chattering of Shaggy’s teeth, the receptionist stuck a thumb over to a group of desks just passed hers.

 

The effect of this was almost immediate. 

 

Half of the chairs squeaked. Some of the men desperately swept what visible rubbish they could find into their bins, sat uncomfortably straight, turning to give Daphne their best welcoming smile.

 

It was all too familiar. This always sent shivers down her spine, the creased eyes and grins seeping something lurking, swimming, deep underneath. She could feel the gaze like a poisoned comb, raking over her entire being leaving her incredibly cold and bare. Hacking away with kind eyes. Over her dress, hair, collarbone, neck, face, hands… and other features. But this was normal. It was because she was respectable, this was what happened to respectable women, this is what respectable men did, what Fred will sometimes do one day, what she will never do because she had Freddie, because she was a respectable woman, and was devoted to only Fred. This was her being respectable. This was normal, she was just overreacting. She nearly shivered. She shouldn’t of. The gazes cut into her skin. She felt a little cold.

 

The receptionist pointed lazily over at one of the officers, the one who let them through the other day. “Yeah, you’ll be looking for Officer Holtz, heard him mention something this morning.” The other men sunk in their chairs a little, returning to their papers. But even as she made her way over to Officer Holtz’s desk she could feel the corner of their eyes trained on her like lasers. 

 

They got to Holtz’s desk. It was unclean.    
  
“Oh, wondered when I would hear from you folk again.” The officer said, fiddling with his hat nervously.    
  
Daphne cleared her throat tenderly. Shedding the shiver she felt in her shoulders. “We were just wondering where we could conduct our mystery project, we talked about yesterday. So it doesn't get in the way of you respectable gentlemen.” 

 

The officer flicked the brim of his hat. Leaning back in his chair slightly, as if he would rather be somewhere else.“Welcome you lot for not being troublemakers” he smiled. He leant forwards. “If you could keep away from a few places of investigation that would be quite considerate” Velma pointedly flicked out a notebook. The officer frowned. “What is she…?”

 

“oh! Just taking notes to make sure we don't compromise your investigation” Daphne said quickly. She swiftly gave a sweet smile, plastered on like a medieval visor. The officer frowned at her, then shrugged. 

 

“Up north of the cliffs we're still examining a car, but further south there's a light shack that's unsafe, and besides that the most recent missing person's boss who works in the accounting firm in the town over. Keep clear of those and you'll be fine” Velma furiously scribbled, but the officer didn't notice this time, leaning back in his chair. He glanced at the clock and almost jumped out of his seat. “Shi- Shoot, I need to be out on a patrol!” He quickly shoved his chair in neatly at his desk, tipping his hat, and racing past them. Signalling the end of their conversation.    
  
They made their way out of the sheriff's office quicker than they went in, Shaggy was almost shaking like a leaf, and Fred was still clamping down his jaw so hard Daphne was scared his teeth would snap. They untied Scooby from the nearby parking sign, and Velma peered at her notes, completely absorbed.    
  
“Like, man, I can’t believe he told us where all the investigations were happening.” Shaggy said. Calming down the moment he held Scooby’s leash again, Fred stroked his chin.   
  
“Daph always had a way with words” He beamed. “And we don’t look half dogey either.” although no one agreed with him on this.

  
They started picking their way back to the diner when Fred piped up again, his voice lowered. “Are you sure you want to do this gang?” He started.  “I mean, what could they possibly be hiding that requires us to look for it.”    
  
Shaggy quickly nodded. “Like! Maybe it’s not actually that bad!” He squeaked. “Like, maybe we can just go back home, or maybe like we can go to live in one of the colonies-”   
  
“No.” Velma and Daphne nearly snapped simultaneously. Daphne looked away, both at Shaggy’s disappointed face and anything Velma.    
  
“Like, it’s not that bad right…?” Shaggy asked softly. “Once you get used to it?” He offered desperately. Nobody really answered when he went to tie up scooby in front of the Diner again. They creaked open the doors “I mean, like, this is probably just an overreaction. We should stick together, but maybe that puddle was just roadkill, man!? There’s like, no need to do anything dangerous!” Velma ignored him, Daphne went to order food, but something made her stop. The soft crackling of the news radio her ear had become accustomed to seeking out. The slightly warbled voice of the local news caster, the muttering of “Sandpine coast”. She softly went to touch the shoulder next to her, to get Shaggy to pipe down a little.    
  
“....Deputy Sheriff of Shandpine coast explained that the violent vietnam revolt was kept under control in a few hours. But, warns that many disruptors of the peace did get away despite police best efforts. Including his own former son ‘Frederik Herman Jones’ with a band of aggressors and homosexuals. He calls for anyone with information on this band of deviants and any persons affiliated with The Sandpine Coast disruption to notify local authorities immediately. In other news: Christmas is around the corner…”    
  
Daphne paused. ‘Former son’. That word shot through her like a winter wind shot through a summer dress. She gaped, her mouth unrespectfully unhinged. She could feel her arms shivering, she didn’t know what to do, her parent’s had never prepared her for finding out her best friend had been disowned on public radio. She looked over at the blissful trio besides her, pouring over the menus, or in Velma’s case squinting at a notepad.    
  
Everything felt numb, as if she was suddenly floating underwater, as if she was watching a world going by her window all too fast. The rug had finally swept from under her feet, She numbly got up.   
  


“Freddie… I think we should eat somewhere else today.” She said sweetly, Fred furrowed his brow, opening his mouth to protest but Daphne cut him off. “Somewhere else.” She reaffirmed.    
  


 

*

  
  
  
  


  
Daphne daintaly packed up the few belongings she had dragged into the motel room, into the rucksack the colony had provided her. She breathed normally. Shoulders taught. Yet she almost tore the the shirts and skirts with the sheer ferocity her nervous hands were administering the folds. As if the now perfectly square sheets of fabric were the only thing pulling her world together. 

 

She knew she shouldn't be thinking about it, she felt like kicking herself that she was, but she couldn’t help thinking about what her family was doing. Had they heard this? The radio hadn’t said her name, but she had been gone for two days now, and Fred was her best friend. Her father used to retired to his study every evening to listen to the ‘unsightly tales of the news’ in private. He would know this, or at least know this soon. But, would he be ringing into the paper to publicly disown her too?    
  
The thoughts kept circling around, like a shark in a tank. Never going anywhere, but drowning away what really mattered, Fred. But she felt numb. Number. The more numb she felt the more she felt like tearing the stupid clothes she was trying to fold. 

 

Velma watched her do this, aggravated. Her spare clothes for the 3 days they had planned to stay in this motel tossed in her rucksack ages ago. She sat on her bed, lifting a condemning eyebrow. “Are you actually going to tell us why you cancelled our motel booking, and forced us out of that diner before our food had even arrived?” She said accusingly.    
  
Daphne nearly jumped, dropping the shirt she was folding. It crumpled on the floor with a soft thunk. Daphne watched it go, for a few moments, a little too long, her hands still outstretched. Velma’s words didn’t even sink in.   
  
Velma’s face melted into confusion. And Daphne slumped down onto the edge of her bed, pinching the bridge of her nose, she took a deep shaky breath. She looked away from Velma, into her folded hands on her lap. She normally wouldn’t talk to Velma, but things were swirling in her head right now.  “The radio... They announced today that… Freddie’s father reported Fred as a criminal and ‘Former son..’” She took a deep breath.    
  
“I thought something like that would happen”    
“You thought!?” Daphne snapped, Velma rolled her eyes at her.    
  
“Well, considering what happened, Daphne. It was going to happen.” Velma got her rucksack and looped it over her shoulder. “Really, I’m surprised it took them so long.”   
  
Daphne stood up sharply. “Took so long? And you didn’t warn us?”    
  
“If you didn’t see the possibilities then it’s on you.” Velma sighed.    
  
“Possibilities…”

  
“Yes, daph-”   
  
“No! You stop. I don’t care what holier than thou attitude you have Velma. But Fred just got Disowned! Don’t you have a ounce of caring in that callous brain of yours!” Daphne snapped. Velma, stared back, feet firmly staying her ground, but her eyes were the same as ever, unreadable and staring right through her. Warm brown eyes that seemed to have a world swimming behind them, she couldn’t figure it out it infuriated her more. She felt like shouting again, but her voice faltered under Velma’s gaze. She snapped her head away.    
  
She could hear the soft afternoon breeze play with their curtains against Velma’s calm footsteps towards the door. Velma creaked open the motel door, pausing. “I’m actually going to help with the van.” She walked out “You talk to Frederick”    
  
Daphne picked up the shirt she dropped on the ground. She chucked it into her bag. 


	5. Chapter 5

#  Chapter 5

  
  


It was 10:43 when their van slunk behind the obstructing trees north east of Hamishville. 

  
And it was strangely warm. Besides the bone cutting coastal breeze that is. The others had rock paper scissored for who got to sleep inside the van on the way here. Shaggy had a hilariously dramatic time trying to get scooby out of the dog food bag. Fred was just his bubbly self the whole way up, as popular but respectable music drifted through the radio. It almost felt normal, like a happy little bubble. 

 

But, for Daphne, the warmth didn’t seep in. She wanted it to, but her head kept on spinning like a whirlpool. Hamishville waves striped away that warmth, and laughter. The crashing pooled at her feet, soaking every leaf into a marsh. She felt like she was flailing. Like the world was shifting beneath her feet and she couldn't get a grip. And she felt numb, so very numb, it stumped her thoughts like a bog, sinking beneath the murk before they even had a shot at trudging through. 

 

It still didn't feel real. Like it was happening to someone else.

 

She looked up at Fred. The man that girls would kill to have. He was part of a respectable family, studying engineering of all things, he went to church every Sunday even when he was sick, smiled in any scenario. Her family loved him. And here he was, smiling, going on like this was one of the many camping trips he’d go on with Dick and his other friends from home. Almost as if that smile and perfect hair was carved in stone. Warm Sandpine Coast stone. 

 

How did you tell someone they got disowned. Her mind couldn’t wrap around it, how would he react, he wouldn’t change would he? What did it mean? What happened now? How do you even say the words without it sounding harsh, or off, or cruel, or jovial. ‘Hello Fred, you were just disowned, but how’re you finding that engineering degree?’. That wouldn’t do. This wasn't in an article in her magazines. Or her father's lectures. Or something her friends gossiped about. 

 

She didn't know what to do. 

 

The thoughts were swirling in her head.

 

“You had something to tell me Daph?” Fred grinned. Daphne startled. Recovering and clearing her throat, if she was anyone else she would be wringing her hands. 

 

“Well, Freddie…” she started. She didn’t want to say it, did she have to?

 

Fred just grinned his simple grin. Which was almost a punch to the face, she never knew that grin could be so uncomfortable. “We can talk about it tomorrow if you're tired, Daph.”

 

It made Daphne falter, what would happen if she told him. What did being disown mean? If he wasn't respectable what were they going to do? How could they get married? Away from her father's church, no two families into the front rows, say goodbye to the white picket fence, did her family disown her too? Things were crumbling, crumbling behind her number eyes. She had to tell him tomorrow, no use worrying his respectable mind tonight. And it made it less real, she just wanted things to be normal for one night. Just one. Was that too much to ask? But something faltered in her. She could almost imagine Velma’s gaze on the back of her neck, or Velma directing them to the woods after the protest. She wanted to curl up, safe from the maw of Hamishville winds, from the talons of the cliffs, away from the venom of the foreign shores of tie dye and flowers. But, it made her feel stupid. She didn’t know why.  “I'm going to sleep, Daph! Big morning tomorrow-” 

 

“Your dad disowned you!” The words spewed out of her mouth like happy hour out of a alcoholic. 

 

She stopped. 

 

Her hands shot to her face. She could feel Velma's eyes properly on her now. Her ears burnt red. She turned back to Fred. 

 

Fred stood frozen. 

 

“Your …” she moved her hands from her face. “He disowned you on radio… today” the words kept fumbling out, she kicked herself with every one. Her mother's voice crashed in her mind, the tapping of her father's pipe, she spluttered, the words just spilt out, like a barrel tumbling down a hill, growing faster and faster, smashing on rocks.

 

Fred said nothing. Just staring at her as if she was a dolphin stealing a unicycle. They nearly stared right through her. As if she wasn’t even there.    
  
Fred's smile was long gone. And now, it was replaced with something weird. Fallen and alien. It looked like someone else’s face was sewn onto his.

 

“Freddie, I…”

 

“He didn't” Fred said softly. “...he wouldn't” He squatted down on his sleeping bag. Gaze lazy, his fingers streaked through his hair. “That, no, that doesn't sound right!” 

 

“It was on the radio Freddie-”

 

“Well maybe your radio lied!” He snapped.    
  
Daphne jerked back, Her veins felt like ice. She felt almost dizzy. “Freddie… We can work through this.” She tried. 

 

But Fred raised a dejected hand. He let out a deep sigh, combing his hair with his fingers. “No, daph… I… I don’t. I’ll deal with this on my own.” 

 

“But, Freddie-”   
  
“No... Daph, no.” His voice was almost gone. Soft, almost kitten like. He turned away from her, climbing into his sleeping bag. “Just. Can you … can you go away for a bit.” His voice sounded shakey.   
  
She felt a tap on her shoulder.    
  
Shaggy gave her an apologetic smile. “I’ll talk to Fred, Daphne.” He whispered. Shaggy made his way to the sleeping bag next to Fred, while Daphne was left there. The crashing of waves clawing at her back, and the cold seeping through the soles of her shoes. 

 

She eventually made her way to her sleeping bag in the back of the van. Ignoring both Velma and infrequent whispers from outside.    
  


  
  


*

  
  


There was always something corpsely about late autumn, chilly mornings. 

 

They all huddled in a service station car park. Hugging in on themselves or hiding in the back of the van. The sun didn't even creep over their horizons. Nor was the service station far enough from the coast for the trees to shield them from the almost icy winds that gnashed and gnawed through their thinly clothes. It was the kind of pre morning that would’ve made her entire body stand on edge, if it had the energy to do so. Were the fatigue chilled her bones, and the wind finished her off. It whistled in her frosted ears, her fingers numb like cold sausages. If only it was polite to rub her hands together, or breathe on them. She shivered. 

 

It was 5:47 am. It was freezing. The wind replaced the Twitter of birds. Light fog replaced their breath. Their only sunset was the flickering, crackling light of the phone booth.

 

Daphne watched the shadowy vision of Fred hunched in the phone booth. His hands shook, his hair was untucked and messy, he even had the start of some stubble around his chin. He looked almost gaunt and ghostly, even with a full face and broad shoulders. 

 

He looked wrong. She couldn't get that out of her head. She didn't look at him for long. 

 

Apparently he and Shaggy had decided to use the phone booth to call his family in the small hours of the morning. Early enough to eradicate any chance of a police car spotting them or to avoid suspicion of hanging around a closed petrol station on a Sunday. It also worked with Velma's plans for the day. 

 

It was a fair enough plan. As long as nobody in his family minded receiving a call before 6am. But then again, Fred was an early riser. Maybe his family was as well. 

 

Shaggy breathed into his lanky hands, rubbing them together for warmth. A large cloud of mist escaping his lips and catching the flickering light of the phone booth. She felt sorry for shaggy most of all in this weather, frail frame and lanky arms. She was surprised he hadn't frozen solid. Maybe it was to do with the neverending pacing track he had set up, from the phone booth to Scooby. Silently checking on each.

 

He spun around back to the van again. Where Velma was nearly falling asleep sitting up. And where Daphne was standing a fair way away from her, trying to catch the heat radiating from the engine. 

 

He gave Velma a friendly smile, Velma sent a lazy stony gaze back. “So, like, Velms. Do you have anyone you want to call, man?” He asked kindly. He rubbed his hands together, peering past her at the ever snoozing figure of Scooby. Scooby Doo didn’t seem to feel the chill at all. She was a little jealous. 

 

Velma lifted an eyebrow, her glasses slowly sliding down her nose. “I couldn't get them to pick up even if I payed them” she joked snidely. Shaggy stopped rubbing his hand, straightening awkwardly. His mouth making a very distinct “o” shape. 

 

“Oh… right…” he said. He coughed awkwardly. Velma raised an almost playful eye brow. And went back to her half asleep pose.    
  
Shaggy coughed lightly into his hand.  He fixed his awkward grin, spinning around to Daphne. Clasping his hands.  “so… like, how about you Daphne!” He leant around the corner of the van, to where Daphne was huddle around the steaming bonnet of the van. 

 

“Me?” Daphne furrowed her brow. She took a deep breath. She hadn’t thought of that. She looked over at Fred, an alien figure hunched in the phonebooth, it made her gut feel cold. Something she really didn’t need in this weather. She quickly turned away.  “Yes, I think I do.” She admitted. 

 

Shaggy pulled a coin out of his pocket, strutting over to her and placed it gently in her palm. “Then the phone booth is all yours next!” He said brightly. 

 

The coin chilled her palm, as her head snapped up. “Wha- no, Shaggy. It's really quite alright, i have coins of my own-” 

 

Shaggy waved a hand. “Like, you’re paying for motels and food for me and scoobs! Consider this paying off my debt the long way, man.” Shaggy chuckled lightly. Then stuck his hands under his armpits. He went to talk again.   
  
The door to the phone booth shut. Daphne and Shaggy whipped around. 

 

Fred hauled himself out of the phone booth, eyes unfocused, arms wrapped around his wide torso. Sunken in on himself, like a melting candle. He shuffled over to them, not noticing the pair of eyes on him. 

 

Daphne cleared her throat awkwardly. Trying to block the shambling  figure as much as she could out of her mind. She had to, for Freddie. But she couldn't help but wince. “How’s your father?” She asked eagerly. Clicking back into a polite proper tone. 

 

Fred grimaced for a moment. Hugging himself harder.   
  
“That wasn’t my father, Daph… It was aunty Jolene.” he sighed.    
  
“...Aunty Jolene….?” She cocked her head, her hand dropping back to her side. “who's Jolene?”    
  
“Dad’s side, she usually knows what’s going on.” He rubbed his hair, the unruly strands sticking to his oily forehead. “We were close before… Dad… moved us down to Sandpine for work. So I thought why not ask?”   
  
“What did she say?” Shaggy asked gently. Fred took a deep breath.   
  
“...That, Daph was right. Dad, did dis… he’s coming up tomorrow with a few police cars too. And he wants to take me back, put me in the military, he’s going to send me to vietnam, and if I still protests he’s going to jail me with the other sodom…” Fred streaked his fingers through his oily hair. Squatting where he stood, Shaggy put a bony hand on his shoulder as Fred’s eyes unfocused.    
  
Daphne faltered. Stopped dead in her tracks. This felt so wrong, so stupidly wrong. Fred, her Fred, crumpled like an autumn leaf. In an abandoned car park, in a weird town, with a floral van in the foreground, hippy holding his shoulder, churchless on a Sunday morning, no smile in sight. It just felt off, like a block in her mind, that she could see it and she couldn’t see it.    
  
She already missed the showers in the motel.    
  
She didn’t know what to do. But, she would rather be on an alien planet, than here right now.    
  
“Freddie. We- We can fix this ok?” She said on reflex. The words felt hollow, and she couldn’t help but be hyper aware of how cold the air was around her. Creeping into her bones.    
  
“Like, Fred buddy.” Shaggy spoke softly. “Just, take a deep breath. How was your aunty like, talking to you?”    
  
Fred dropped his hands to his knees, sucking in the icy air. He massaged his temples. “ She… She said she wouldn’t tell dad that she had heard from me.” Fred said quietly.    
  
“See, like, that’s good, pal!” Shaggy said. Fred nodded numbly, still trying to breathe like Shaggy had told him. Shaggy gave a worried smile to Daphne. “Like, you take your call now, man.” 

 

Daphne left, numbly. Almost like she turned off a film. And she jogged, her, jog. Straight to the grimy flickering phone booth a few metres away. Almost like it was a safe point, that it was a little box holding all of normalcy in its sticky graffitied walls. She swung through the door, rattling it shut behind her. 

 

It was a lot quieter in here. It let her take a breath. 

 

She would admit that she had never used a payphone before. Her parents always told her horrible stories of the people who used payphones. Prostitutes, murderers, grimey truck drivers. But, desperate times called for desperate measures. The first Blake in her family to use one. She lightly picked up the reviewer, put in the coin, and dialled. 

 

A click, a wait, then a warbling of a ring. The light in the booth flickered, but she didn't care how sticky and faulty the phone was. She soon found herself gripping the receiver. Listening in with a hungry ear to the echoey crackling ringing on the other end. 

 

One ring, two, another.  

 

There was only one voice she wanted to hear right now, there was only one person she knew who woke a little before 6am on a Sunday. 

 

Click.

 

“...Hello?” a voice crept through the phone, tired, light, but poised. Daphne gripped the receiver. She felt her own personal nightmare crack a little bit. And all it took was the smooth composed voice she knew so well. “... Look, I don't know who you are but it is before 6am in the morning. I don't know if this is some kind of prank, or god almighty above forbid a salesman. But, I am not interested…!”

 

“Mother…” daphne said. The voice went quiet, for a few beats too long. But finally the voice came through again, low and hushed.

 

“You finally turn up.” Daphne's mother said simply. “After three days!” She hissed. 

 

Daphne's throat went dry. She gripped the receiver. “Mother, I can explain…!” but her mother quickly cut her off, as if cutting Daphne's very skin. This voice sounded fake, rushed, harsh, the smooth articulation and the memory of a southern drawl sunk beneath the waves. Becoming, twisted, encasing, brutal. 

 

“No. There is no explanation in the  world or heaven above that could explain  _ this _ Daphne. Do you have ANY idea what my  last few days have been like? I had to hear from deputy Jones about you and that  _ Fred _ having joined a group of God forsaken hippies and Sodom-” her mother choked on the word. Daphne blinked. Her mind shot blank, and her hand shook a little. How stupid she must look now. How much did she look like a lowly delinquent ushered into a phone booth before sunrise. It made her shudder. 

 

“It's a misunderstanding, I swear!” Her voice quavered. She gripped the phone more tightly. Forgetting all those stories her parents told her before. 

 

“I want to hear nothing of it!” Her mother snapped. “I never thought I raised a liar Daphne. Let alone a  _ hippie _ or a-a pervert!…”

 

“I accidentally got swept up in the protest!” Daphne pleaded. Digging the receiver into the side of her head. Gripping the phone dial with her left. She didn’t know why she gripped them suddenly. But it almost made her feel secure, clinging to a raft in whitewater, the world rocked and frothed again. 

 

“You mean that mob? That was advertised in that pamphlet your  _ respectable _ friend Dick tried to take away from you?”

 

“How did you know about the pamphlet-?”

 

“You were missing, Daphne! Without a word! Of course I had to look for you, what sort of mother do you think I am? I thought you were dead in a ditch!”

 

“I just…”

 

“I'm starting to think that would've been the better outcome.”

 

Daphne fell silent. So did her mother.

 

Her mouth felt like a desert. Dry, course, her mind felt like it was buzzing. She gripped the receiver for dear life, the light bulb flickered dangerously. Her mind froze over.

 

She heard a long sigh from the other end. “We raised you to be better than this Daphne” Her mother sounded gentle. Her voice, soft over the crackling line. Like a soft plea. She could almost picture her mother on the other end of the phone, hand poised over her eyes, lip quivering.    
  
Daphne felt helpless, she didn't want to be here. She wanted to be home, away from car parks. Away from Velma. Away from this weird Fred, Hamish ville, Shaggy, his stupid elderly great dane. She wanted to be warm, to feel Sandpine Coast beneath her shoes, to read catalogues, gossip, ignore radios, talk to Freddie, get married, have the perfect wedding, bake for the church bake sale, respectfully play Scrabble on rainy days. To live, for things to just make sense for two bloody seconds. To not feel like  _ this.  _ In a stupid payphone, near a stupid cliff, in a town that seemed a world away from home. 

 

Her mother’s voice crackled through the phone. “I won't tell your father you called. But, I pray to God that your soul can be saved, Daphne. I pray.”

 

Daphne looked down. 

 

“Unless you can tell me that that respectable woman we love is deep down there somewhere, Daphne. That you haven't become an abomination unto God. Tell me the rumours aren't true. Can you tell me-” 

 

Crack!   
  
The light bulb overhead exploded. 

 

Sparks cascading down around her.

 

Daphne screamed. Leaping back, hitting her shoulder against the door with a crash.    
  
Someone said something outside.    
  
The entire car park went black. Not even lit by the scattering of puny stars overhead. The promise of the morning sun only pricking the horizon. 

 

Daphne grabbed the receiver, hoisting it to her ear. 

 

Nothing. 

 

Not even the normal crackling of an unconnected phone. Just, nothing.    
  
She still held it to her ear. As if doing that would bring back the call. As if it would make it all better. Where she could explain, make it better, go home like nothing ever happened. She could still do that, right? Without Fred… just, go home. The first cab Sandpine Coast, go to some sort church retreat for wayward girls.   
  
She didn’t even know what she would say over the phone. She just wanted it back.   
  


Her hands shook. 

 

But, most infuriating of all. Daphne didn’t even feel anything, only a small prick of dread in her ribs. The rest of her body buzzed numbly. Like the untuned screen of a television. 

 

The door slammed open behind her and Velma grabbed her elbow. “Get over here!” She hissed. Daphne jumped, flicking the receiver back on its hook. 

 

Things just kept getting worse. 

 

Velma yanked her back, half running to the van. Pulling her into a squat. Fred and Shaggy hid under the van's rear benches. Shaggy's teeth chattering violently. Scooby just snoozed. Daphne just fell along with it, almost like she was floating.    
  
Everyone was looking over the road, far into the woods, at a soft ebbing yellow light. It looked like a torch light, bobbing along through the trees. But it was too far to get a good look at whoever it was. Daphne, numbly climbed into the back of the van. 

 

“Like! Zoinks! Is that the police!?” Shaggy yelped. 

 

“Not this early in the morning!” Fred said. He looked over his shoulder, hair still a tangled mess. 

 

Velma shifted her glasses on her nose, and peered around the corner of the van. “Wandering around the woods with a torch before sunrise, and only days after a man was declared missing? He could be connected to this mystery. Either that or he's some really weird old man.” Velma said. Shaggy gulped. 

 

“I'm hoping it's the later!” He yelped. 

 

The light stopped moving. Velma squinted. 

 

“Like, why has he stopped? Does he like, know we're here!” Shaggy's voice cracked, Scooby opened one lazy eyelid. 

 

“Unlikely, Daphne somehow exploded the lightbulb to the phone booth. Without that lightsource I'd be surprised if he could even see the petrol station.” Velma answered. She rubbed her chin for a moment. “I have to get a closer look” she decided. 

 

“What! But what if he's, like, dangerous?!” Shaggy squeaked. Velma grabbed the crook of Daphne's elbow, dragging her into the car. “We're not really!?...” 

 

“Wait!” Fred scrambled out from under the bench, his breath shakey. He fumbled his way to the driver's seat. “I can drive the van there”

 

“Good idea, that way if it is someone dangerous we can get away.” Velma said. 

 

“Um… it was more I didn't want to walk” Fred muttered. 

 

Daphne took a few breaths. Velma was gripping onto the roof, Shaggy was wedged under a bench, Fred was fumbling for his keys. She just sat there. Hands shaking. She had to do something. Everyone was doing something. Her hand made it to the wall, ready to bracae herself to stand. But her hand was too weak and shakey. 

 

She couldn't help but feel like she was watching a movie. 

 

Fred pulled his keys from his pocket. A single bullet dropping onto the ground with a clink. “found them!” He announced. He stuck the key in the engine. Velma held onto the roof. Shaggy yelped. Daphne stared blankly. Scooby snored. 

 

Fred flicked the engine key. 

 

Nothing. 

 

He flicked it again. 

 

Nothing. 

 

He wrenched it again. And again. Squinted at dials, double checked his gear stick. 

 

“Like, I'm not one to complain about not chasing the scary torch guy...!” Shaggy gulped. “but why aren't we moving?” 

 

Fred frowned at the ignition. “It… it won't turn on…” he said weakly. 

 

Velma leaned over Fred’s shoulder. “Are we sure we have enough petrol?”    
  
“I filled it up yesterday.” The sunrise began to spill across the sky, soft orange light leaking through the foggy windows. Fred glared at the ignition. “I’ll check the engine.” He wobbly said. He stumbled out of the drivers door. Lifting the bonnet. Checking it over for a few moments, before gently closing it again. He shuffle back inside, scratching a stubbly chin, Shaggy looking at him expectedly. “It… looks fine. Besides a few parts that will need replacing soon... but besides that.”    
  
The light got weaker. Daphne straightened up, peaking out the window into the foggy damp morning. The light was moving. Quickly, shooting away through the trees.    
  
“It’s getting away!” She croaked. Everyone shot around, Fred cranked the ignition again, Velma pushed her glasses up her nose. 

 

It grew weak. Incredibly weak. And soon it was gone. Replaced with the leaking light of a sunrise. Gone faster than it appeared.   
  
  
It was gone.  
  
The woods were dark.  
  
  
The engine crept to life. Spluttering. Fred stared at it. “I, uh, got… got the engine going…”   
  
Velma sighed heavily. Sinking down onto a bench. “And there goes a good lead to our mystery.” She joked flatly.    
  
“It’s ok Freddie.” Shaggy squeaked, pulling himself out from underneath the bench. His arms still rattly. “It’s a tricky van.” He explained. Fred just frowned.    
  
“But… there’s nothing wrong with the engine. I’ve been fixing cars since I was a kid with my-” He stopped. Gripping the steering wheel. He shook. Everyone grew quiet. At least everyone but Velma, who still was squinting at the small notepad in her hand. Fred just shook silently, staring ahead, lip quivering slightly. He ran his fingers through his hair. 

 

Daphne wrapped her arms around herself, hugging herself tightly. Everything felt dull, dull and empty. Like something was sucked out of the van. Well, she guessed their parents had just been. At least, she knew they just were, but it felt like a stage, an act. It was easy to think of something as acting if it isn’t acting right. Her with… deviants. Fred being like… that. She needed to sit. And as the van eventually bumbled towards there next location, shaggy crudely boiling water for a coffee for Velma on the way. She did just that.


	6. 6

#  Chapter 6

 

It was perfect. Everything was perfect.  

 

The floors shone perfectly; The cutlery was placed perfectly; The soft humming of hymns, followed by the clacking of those post salsa lessons heels and the soft smell of weekly stew, was perfect. Everything was in it’s spot, from the sun to the lulling smoke curling from her father’s face behind the most respectable newspaper. Like a painting, but more lived in, more real, to the point where she could almost feel the table cloth against her fingertips.    
  
Except she couldn’t feel it in her finger tips. Only the painted van bench under her palm, or the cold iron against her back. Those evenings had felt like the world outside the hazy foggy nightmare of now as if she was plunged into an ocean of television noise. Her clothing from yesterday stuck to her, she smelt stale and sour, the imposing presence of Velma made the hair on her neck prick, and she couldn’t even look Fred in the eye. She felt stupid for it, for all of it, like a car spinning in circles because the builder forgot to add wheels on the left side. But she couldn't shake it. She wished that she could.

 

Daphne just wanted to be home, a world away from this. But, she couldn't, and wasn’t. And she knew this meant that she had taken those evenings for granted, even if she wasn't sure how. But this is what happens to protagonists in those novels she read as a teen, they took their world for granted, and it was rightly ripped away. A divine punishment almost. So she had to have taken those nights for granted, she must've been horrible, or self centred, or crass, or arrogant, despicable and sinful. 

 

Because if she hadn't... Why was it gone?   
  


It didn't make sense. 

 

“C'mon, Scoob! Get up we need you!” 

 

Shaggy heaved the massive pile of greying fur that was his great Dane. The dog barely rolling over. It looked like a stick insect trying to roll over a shoe. And it worked just as well. The hound opened one lazy eye, looked him up and down, and closed again. Shaggy sighed heavily. 

 

It was 7:27 on a Sunday morning. 10 degrees celsius. High chance of rain. 

 

The van sat on a soulless grassy hill crumbling into the Hamishville sea. It was the first place Velma had marked on her notepad. Along with a few other places that everyone was too worn and tired to absorb. But it was still the first. A grimy little shack on a windswept cliff. Right now Daphne wanted nothing less but to sink into her own skin in the back of that grimy van, but she couldn’t help but feel guilt watching Velma buzz around the little shack she cared about so much. Her, guilty, after everything, it made her internally groan. Even if she couldn’t help but feel a little relieved about being able to experience at least one emotion in this bloody nightmare. That and she also couldn’t stand to think of the bored disapproving look Velma would give her if she didn’t do anything. She got out of the van. Walking like a drunkard with just as much direction. Onto that stupidly simple but serene hill Velma seemed so impressed by. 

 

But when her feet touched the poor soft soil her ears pricked. Just like with the news radio. She hated every bell that was going off in her respectable mind. There was something weird about that shack by the grassy cliff side. Like all those crime novels she read under her covers at 1 am so long ago. It stuck out, like truck driver in a ballroom. She couldn’t shake it the more she thought about it, but the more she looked at this little wooden shack, by the sea, on rippling lake of brown grass the more it looked... dead. Decaying, in a ocean of dying grass and the screaming relentless spray and roaring of the swells below. She had never seen a house that had looked dead. And even with the cacophony of the screaming seas, roaring wind, groans of the sulking shack, and hushing of the dry yellow grass. It looked quiet. And that should’ve frightened a respectable young woman.    
  
But Daphne moved forwards.    
  
Drudging step after step through the whispering meadow. The grass tickling her hip as she waded forwards. She couldn’t help but go towards it, even if every step felt so wrong it hurt. But she wandered closer to the furious salt laden wind and occasional spray. Closer to the creaking corpsely weatherboards. Till she was at the sunken worn porch in front of her. Wooden boards that even if they looks more reliable than their wall counterparts, creaked uncomfortably under her weight. The door itself was already open, just a little, a crack into a dark abyss inside, the smell punching her in the nose, making her eyes water. A dingey, putrid, unrespectable shack, and she had her palm against it’s door.

 

How deep did the rabbit hole go?

 

“Jinkies, those two are useless. Looks like it’s you and I, Daphne.” Velma sighed. Daphne jumped, nearly crashing into the door. Velma was standing on the porch next to her, notepad flipped out, but she didn’t notice Daphne’s improper display, instead her eyes were almost at the window, cold, pointed, her pen scratching in her notepad.    
  
Daphne came back to reality. “I… what?” She said stupidly. Velma sighed, Daphne's head buzzed.    
  
“The police were obviously interested in this place for a reason.” She looked over at the uncomfortably near cliffs. “And I don’t think it was for its prime location” She added bitingly.    
  
“O...oh.” Daphne mumbled. She felt really out of her depths now, as if this morning wasn’t bad enough, not horrendous and life ruining as it already been, as if her life had not only just been ripped away but not even beginning to even sink in, she was now bumbling like an absolute buffoon in front of the caustic Velma Dinkley. She felt like she had lost her footing, and it wasn’t because of the dusty impoverished soil.    
  
“My guess is this building was man made.” She continued, pointing at the groaning boards. “And obviously, horribly maintained. Even curiouser though, is that it seems to be extremely lived in.”    
  
“Lived… in?”

 

“Through the windows. There’s a large array of personal and essential items, although I would brace yourself…” She glared over at Daphne. “Wouldn’t want little miss perfect to get her hands dirty.” She added coldly. Daphne opened her mouth to react, but Velma swiftly pushed the door open. It creaked, as all proper suspicious doors do. She saw inside.   
  
She almost forgave Velma’s warning at the first glance of it, the shack was waist high with objects, all assorted into piles, mouldy boxes, cans of food, dirty clothing. Only separated by a small paths in between them, enough for a grown man to walk around without bumping anything. And the stench, it hit her, not the stench of rotting food, but mould. Mould, sweat, and an inescapable damp. But there was one thing absolutely bizarre that stood out to Daphne. Something that caught her eye. The house was littered with dozens upon dozens of plugged in lamps. Lamps on nearly every horizontal surface and stable pile of stuff that was available.  But, every single one of their bulbs were shattered.    
  
“Oh great. Looks like a hoarder.”    
  
Daphne turned around. “Hoarder?”

 

“Someone who is incapable of throwing things away. Hoarding it instead. Like a _hoarder_ .” She muttered coldly.   
  
Daphne nodded numbly, but she wasn’t listening. There was something that was nagging at the back of her brain, something that sent alarm bells down her spine. A mouldy mattress, a pile of boxes, decomposing newspapers, a sagging table. She stopped, she wasn’t sure if it was her imagination. The rug underneath the table, seemed crooked, disturbed. Unlike the rest of the mess around here it looked slightly bunched, sitting skewed against a clean stain where it used to be. And she couldn’t help but notice that it looked weirdly… shredded.  
  
“Back to square one…” Velma muttered. Snapping the notepad shut. “Just a hoarder. Probably got police attention for building illegally on public property” She sighed. "Onto the next location."  
  
“Doesn’t … this place seem odd to you?” Daphne said quickly, Velma gave her a look.   
  
“It’s a hoarder house, of course it’s abnormal” Velma sighed.  
  
“The light bulbs are shattered.” She said quietly. Velma stopped for a bit.   
  
“Well, yes. But…” She paused, looking around at the dozens and dozens of shattered pools of glass around the lamps. “If the owner’s a hoarder then it’s nothing out of the ordinary.”   
  
Daphne gulped. Tugging lightly at her collar. She felt uneasy, she hated feeling uneasy, unsure, as if all her proper conversational skills were ripped out of her throat “Why are the lamps all over the shack, while everything else including rubbish is organised into piles?” She asked softly. Velma fully stopped at this one, squinting. The notepad opened with a shuffle.  
  
“That is... odd.” She admitted. She combed over the scene, looking over every lamp, scratching a tally ever so often. Daphne couldn't help but watch, the focus in her eyes, and the soft scratching against paper. It made the rubbish tip of a room the little less unnerving. Velma eventually stopped. “39…” She muttered. “Way too many to be shattered by the power generator I found outside… they should’ve short circuited the power if anything...” She stopped, pushing her glasses up her nose. “How did they get shattered…?” Daphne jolted, ripping her eyes away. She needed to focus. And the rug was still making the hairs on her neck stand on end. She couldn’t help it. She knew it must’ve been nothing, but it still tugged at her attention, like a child grabbing their mother’s sleeve. She crouched down, her hand wandering to the soggy hem. Barely even noticing the mouldy fabric in her dainty hand. What would her father say if he saw her now. Crouched knee deep in filth and squalor. A Blake, what a joke. Before she could think that though, something shiny caught her eye, small round and metallic.   
  
A handle. To a trap door. It got stranger. But every inch of her being told her that in every detective novel she read the vital clue was always beneath the floorboards. A wad of money, a murder weapon, a newspaper clipping. Something that was not obvious but important. And they were looking for a missing person weren’t they. Nothing too complicated or dangerous. Nothing like a murder case or spy game. Maybe this was the clue, for a mystery she didn’t even care about too much. So here was only one thing she could do. She opened it. With a creak. A ladder that cascaded into the dark. And there was something at the bottom. Something large, and still. She squinted. Her eyes slowly adjusting. But when they did.  
  
Daphne froze. Her hand shook, her stomach turned, her mind shot blank. And it hit her. Everything, like a tidal wave, drowning her, bashing her, tumbling her through sand and white water… it felt real.

 

She **had** taken the quiet moments for granted.   
  
“Don’t tell me you’ve blown a fuse now, too?” Velma groaned.    
  
“No, I…”   
  
“A rat?” Velma suggested sourly.   
  


“I found… some of the hoarder” 

  
  


*

  
  


Sheriff Higgins had not had a good day. His wife was angry at him spending “Too much time at the bar”. His son was “Too sensitive” to join the little leagues baseball team. The weather was miserable. And to top it off, a flock of birds had decided to empty their bowels directly on top of his freshly waxed Chevy this morning. Higgins was not having a good day. And now, he was pulled into his office, straight after church,  to the rumours that one of his officers had just let through a van full of hippies into the town, and had compromised a current investigation. Out of the two rumours Sheriff Higgins couldn’t decided which one he hated more. So now he was thrown into his office, on a rainy and already bad morning to face down this officer. An officer who was looking very sweaty in the chair opposite him in his office. And that wasn’t just because Higgins made sure the seat on the other side of his desk was the least comfortable one he could find. He was just a very sweaty man.   
  
Higgins plucked a cigarette out of his front shirt pocket, lighting it with a scowl. If he had anything he could count on today at least it was a cigarette. He wondered if he could appoint cigarettes to officers, they seemed more bloody capable. The smoke billowed from his nose, making the offending officer choke. 

 

Higgins was beginning to like this sweaty man less and less. 

 

He shut his cigarette holder with a clack.   
  
“Officer…” He stared down his nose at the squirming man before him. Now, Sheriff Higgins perfectly knew the name, rank, and birthplace of every man in his precinct. It was a small town station, he liked to run a business where he knew more about his men then they knew about him. So he perfectly knew that the man wringing his hands before him was none other than one Edmund Blair Holtz (A noticeably strange middle name for a man). But, Higgins prided himself at keeping all young recruits on the edge of their toes, and you could always tell a lot about a man by how he said his name. His father told him that.   
  
“Holtz, uh, Officer Holtz sir” 

 

“Don’t be so sure about that officer part, son” He said coldly. The maybe officer cleared his throat, and choked on the cigarette smoke a little more. “What’re these rumours I’m hearing about last Saturday?”    
  
“What rumours, sir?”    
  
Higgins took a long dangerous draw on the cigarette, the smoke wafting through his moustache like a shrub land on fire. he had no time for bullshit right now. Holtz shrunk in his chair, holding his breath. 

 

Higgins’s eyes squinted. “Do you take me for an idiot son?”   
  
“A… what, sir?”   
  
“Do you, boy, take  _ me  _ as a  _ fool _ ?”    
  
“No! Of course not, sir!”    
  
“Then! Why is it, boy, that on the one afternoon I have off, I am hearing about a band of flaming hippies marching into this precinct like they own the bloody place, in our bloody town no less, getting critical information about an ongoing missing persons investigation from a one, resident, Mr Edmund B Holtz!” He barked. Holtz jerked. “Something that this Holtz boy is telling me he knows absolutely nothing about.”   
  
“...that?”   
  
At least he wasn’t dumb enough to pretend any longer. “Yes, son,  _ that.  _ And would be 'that, sir', from you.” Officer Holtz shifted uncomfortably, Higgins took another draw from his cigarette, eyeing him carefully in the prolonged silence. He then made an effort to blow the smoke over to his side of the table, to put some hair on his chest. Choking around tobacco. That was a kick. Was the next generation so bloody frail.“So, do you care to explain yourself?”    
  
Holtz cleared his throat, twisting his fingers in his grasp. “They weren’t hippies, sir. A woman and her college friends wanted to do a project so I… let them through. She was very clear and well spoken.”   
  
“And the case information?”    
  
“Only where to stay away, they didn’t want to be a nuisance... She was a lovely lady!”    
  
Higgins sighed, running a hand over his face. “Did you tell them key locations to our investigation?”    
  
“I…” Holtz gulped, and paused for a few moments. “I did.”    
  
Higgins grew seethingly quiet. Reaching the end of his cigarette, he dropped the stub in the ashtray. He didn’t even think tobacco could fix the headache he was having right now. “And what of the ‘not hippies’. They didn’t happen to be in a brightly painted van did they?”    
  
“If you mean a large painted title on both sides saying the… murder mobile or something...?”   
  
Higgins paused for a moment, he slumped in his chair a little bit. Maybe he didn’t quite need that second cigarette just yet. “The murder mobile?”    
  
“They said they were doing a small project for college.”    
  
Higgins massaged the bridge of his nose. “That’s a little more comforting, son” he sighed irritably. He would take a car full of over excited detective novel kooks over a bunch of deranged perverted hippies any day. “But, that doesn’t excuse the leaking of key locations.”    
  
“Ah! No, sir!” 

 

“Do you understand how deep in shit my ass would be if this little ‘slip up’ of yours gets out to the press, Mr Holtz?”   
  
“Um… no, sir?”   
  
“A whole dogpile of  _ shit,  _ son!” damn it to hell, he ripped out the second cigarette. “Say these not hippies, boy, are actually a group of project students like you say?”    
  
“Yes, sir?”   
  
“With information about all our key locations…”   
  
“Yes, sir?”   
  
“Who publish that little project of theirs, using that key location…”   
  
“Oh…”   
  
“We have to deal with those damn journalists crawling around thinking they have a clue about these bloody disappearances. And those journalists, always have  _ quite  _ the imagination boy.”   
  
“Oh.” Holtz squeaked.    
  
‘Start spinning what ifs about this little investigation, start poking around, getting in our way, the family of the missing person start riding my ass about how little they think I’m doing. People start thinking I’m hiding information. This turns into a high public interest  _ shit show!” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “ _ Sir…”   
  
“This was supposed to be a easy open and shut case boy. I didn’t even want the damn news to send out that bulletin asking for damn information. Makes me look bloody desperate.”    
  
“Sorry, sir…”   
  
“You better be  _ damn  _ sorry, boy.” He spat. “I’m going to have to release a damn statement to the local news this afternoon. Just in case, try and cut down any damn interest in this run of the mill slipped off the cliff one night missing persons shit” He growled to himself.    
  
Holtz looked down at his hands, uncomfortably clearing his throat. Higgins drew on his cigarette heavily, his eyes pure murder. “You’re the officer checking a location for this case case, boy?”   
  
“Um, yes, sir. A small hut up cliffside…”   
  
“You’ll be checking that location with me.” he growled.   
  
“Excuse me, sir.”   
  
“You,  __ Mr  Holtz, will be going through every lead you have relating to this damn bloody case shadowed by me.” He took a needed puff of his cigarette, Higgins eyes transfixed on his bustling moustache, his hands fiddling more furiously now.   
  
“That isn’t... necessary, sir!”

 

“Boy, I don’t have a flying clue how good day old news from little Ms Wendy on the desk is. But, in no way in goddamn hell do not trust your judgement after this fucking stunt, boy! So. I am going to shadow you to every god damn location you told those damn kids. And if I get one  _ wiff _ one  _ inclining  _ of a bloody goddamn hippie! You are going to be out of this precinct and every precinct in our great US of A before you can say the words ‘Officer’. Do. You. Understand?”   
  
Holtz mumbled out a weak reply. A sweaty man through and through higgins thought bitterly.    
  
“We’ll leave for the location if 20 minutes. Get ready. Get out.” Higgins snapped. Holtz nearly dashed out of his office, like a prisoner escaping from a jail. Tail between his legs. Followed by the scrambling of papers and files from his desk.

 

Higgins leant back in his chair, cursing beneath his breath. Nursing the cigarette with what little time he had. 

 

He was  **not** having a good day.

  
  
  


*

 

Daphne vomited.

 

She hadn’t in 13 years, but she did now. She vomited, she felt sick to the stomach, her hand shivered, and she shook. Almost to the bone. She shook, she reacted, her head spun, the grass felt prickly against her ankle, her head pounded, the breeze shook her shaking shoulders. Velma pulled the hair from out of her face, and tried to kind of rub her back, Like she was a non animal person trying to help a sick kitten. But she didn't care. The world was grass and sick. Her lip trembled. 

 

She couldn't get the image out of her head. What she saw under those floorboards. It burnt itself into her eyelids, clawed at her stomach until her nose was full of nothing but bile. For some reason it never occurred to her, it didn’t seem real, a shack at the edge of the cliff. Just a missing persons case. This coast was a quiet area! People didn’t die here, people only got shot accidentally by angry neighbours, or drowned once every few decades doing something stupid and reckless in the middle of the night.    
  
She chucked again. 

 

She felt sick, sick to the core, and cold, so very, very cold. She was shivering, and not because of the damn bone chilling coastal wind. The man was ripped in two, one half was _missing,_ organs torn on the ground, surrounded in a metallic blue and bloody pool. Cold, still, unmoving, eye wide open. They never showed that in bloody films. The eyes. They always looked peacefully asleep in films. Why was it so damn  _ wrong _ . And she had read about this, grisly murders in the safety, the plushness of her own respectable home. Murders like  **this** .   
  
Daphne heaved again. 

 

“Just… get it out…” Velma muttered uncertainly. Everything seemed turned on its head right now. Dead bodies, hippies,  _ Velma _ , this was it, this was hell, she lost, end of scene, match lost. She shivered, hand against the shack wall. She could barely even think straight.

 

Fred and Shaggy sprinted through the grass. Heads bobbing through the field to where Daphne shakily stood doubled over outside the shack. But when they got their they paused, Fred saw the vomit and backed off a little. Looking away.   
  
“Like! Is it food poisoning!” Shaggy yelped.    
  
“No. There was a dead body in there. Wasn’t in tact either” Velma said cooly. Daphne heaved again. 

 

The two paused. Shaggy went pale, his hands dropped. He began to shake.  
  
“A ...Body?" Fred said weakly. He began to tremble, he even backed away slightly.  
  
"Yes, Frederick. You know, those thing dead people are." Velma said dryly. But fred didn't laugh, he just stopped, quiet. The roaring tides seemed unbearably loud now. Crashing all around the small little group of barely adults crowded around this creaking seaside hut.   
  
"You can’t mean…? That’s... not possible!” Fred said weakly.  
  
“It, is and you better get used to it.” Velma sighed.   
  
Shaggy clung to Fred, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. “Like, I knew this was a bad idea man! I knew this was going to be spooky stuff! We’re going to be next! They’ll come after us next, man! We’ll get mangled and butchered, just like…!”  
  
Daphne chucked violently this time, and shuddered. Velma furrowed her brow. Bunching Daphne’s hair back. “Shaggy, that’s enough.”. Shaggy paused, but he still shivered, hanging onto the silent deer in the headlights Fred. Velma, sighed heavily, massaging the bridge of her nose. “What we have to do now, is just…”  
  
“What, Velma!? Do what!? If you have all the answers!’ Fred snapped. “And look- look where you got us!”   
  
Everyone was quiet for a bit. Shaggy shivered harder this time. This time clinging to himself. Daphne shuddered a bit, staring in the grass, her nose full of bile. “Just-Just… slow down for a bit.” Daphne said weakly.   
  
“Not you too Daphne! We were fine before all of this! We were great! Everything was _perfect!_ If it wasn’t for you and those damn hippy pamphlets from Velma you’d read all day we **wouldn’t even be here!** ”  
  
“Freddie, man, please like, stop, man!” Shaggy pleaded.  
  
“If I recall, Fred, it was you at the rally burning your war draft and making yourself number one enemy of Sandpine coast that started this whole thing.” Velma said quietly.  
  
“I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for those pamphlets Daphne would always have around!” Fred shouted. "We shouldn't be here! We should be at home! If it wasn't for Daphne and you...!"  
  
“So, you _deciding_ to burn your draft cards is Daphne’s fault?” Velma said quietly.  
  
“Well…!’ Fred slowed down. Velma left daphne’s side and stood in front of Fred who paused mid gesture. His mouth hung open. “I… um…”   
  
“Look, Frederick Herman Jones..  .” Velma’s voice went dangerously low. “I do not have time for these overly dramatic blame games. If I wanted to deal with a bunch of children I would’ve become a kindergarten teacher.” Fred bit his tongue, almost shrinking in Velma’s glare, his hair dishevelled, bags around his eyes. “Things _happen_ Fredirick. And when they do, we do not sit around pointing fingers at who’s fault it all is, It's pointless and changes **nothing**!” She said poisonously.  
  
Fred slumped, quiet. Shaggy cowered still, eyes twitching nervously. A few beats went passed, a few beats too long.   
  
“What… What do we do, man?” Shaggy said shakily.   
  
“We get out of here, then we see what we do.” Velma said. The two boys nodded while Velma helped Daphne up. And they walked. Daphne couldn't do anything but walk along with her. She didn’t know how to feel about all of this. Any of this. Just everything happening at the same bloody time. So many things were swirling around in her head, and everything smelt and tasted like bile. So she followed, all of them, as they made their way numbly and awkwardly back to the van.  
  
Finally it began to rain.


	7. 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to rewrite this chapter a few times, apologies for delay.

#  Chapter 7

  
  


  
There are three types of weather according to Deputy Sherrif James Higgins: Fishing weather, Lake weather, and shit-storms you can’t light a cigarette in. 

 

Today was the third option. 

 

Higgins huddled in the rain. A damp unlit cigarette hanging from his chapped lips, his mouth tasting like coffee and rainwater, and his hands still itched for the cold steel of his old rusty lighter. All things considered, it wasn’t a surprise that he was cold as shit. It was absolutely pouring. Like the sky had opened over head. It was as if mother nature was revolting her damn self. With the tearing up the churning ocean swells and screaming rain upon this stupid bloody grassy hill.    
And it was a stupid hill.    
And in all the concoction of hell in weather form, Higgins was standing right in the middle of it, drenched to the bone, nose freezing, his throat already getting hoarse, a waterfall of water cascading off his brimmed leather hat. He looked like some sort of ticked off poseidon. But, even if he was shivering and cursing at the damn clouds Higgins still gave himself some shred of dignity, he wasn’t huddling under the veranda. Because according to Higgins, that meant he was a gotdamned man.   
  
Higgins of course wasn’t in the best of moods right now. And not even the windy trip up with Higgions real love of his life, the 1943 Chevrolet Coupe police vehicle, could make up for it. He was tired, it was Sunday, it was shit weather, he was damn cold, and he was babysitting a good for nothing sissy officer who thought a damn hermit who missed a blooming phone call with his sister had some sort of connection to the Thomas Baker case. 

 

There was also a pile of vomit next to him. 

 

Related to the Thomas Baker case his ass.    
  
The hut’s door rattled open and a very sweaty Holtz stumbled out of it. Higgin’s sighed. The boy had only been in there for 10 minutes, and he was already out of his depths.    
  
“I can’t find the hoarder, sir!” Holtz squeaked. His tiny voice struggling in the roaring rain. Higgins furrowed his brow.    
  
“What!?” Higgin’s snapped.   
  
“I SAID! I. CAN’T. FIND. THE-”   
  
“No, I heard you the first time, boy!” Higgins growled. He flicked some water off his brimmed hat and swore to himself. Subtlety, that’s what the younger generation was missing. “What do you mean you can’t find the fucking hoarder?”    
  
“...I checked the shack and he wasn’t around… so… maybe he’s out?” Holtz whimpered, like a dog with his tail between his legs. It made Higgins sneer harder.   
  
“Out!? A hermit!? In this weather?!” Higgins barked. Holtz winced, almost ducking from view under the veranda. Higgins let out a groan tugging on his moustache. “Let me take a look.” He sloshed up to the veranda, the quivering Holtz leaning away from him as he stomped past. Rain trailing off his face. His eyes small and dark. He almost matched the storm outside. Through the open door and he finally got to look at the shack for himself. A shit hole. After a decade in the force he always found that hoarder’s houses look the same. No matter the different people or stuff jammed in the bloating plaster it all look the same. It was a room of junk. And this place was no different. Piles of waist high junk, a mouldy mattress, glass, and a sagging kitchen table. Nothing out of the ordinary. He sighed. “Mr. Wudstrop! police!”    
  
The voice rung through the creaking sloshing house. But all that answered was a soft dripping of a leaky ceiling and the muffled storm outside. He tucked his thumbs in his belt, he could feel Holtz’s stare on his back. He took a deep breath in. “ **Mr. Wudstrop!** ” He barked.    
  
Nothing.    
  
The boards creaked under his weight as he rocked back on his heels. Trying to get a Hoarder out of their den, this would be a kicker.    
  
“Jebodiah Wudstrop!” He snapped.    
  
Thunder rolled.    
  
The rain went on.    
  
Higgins balled his hands into a fist.   
  
“I… Couldn’t get him to respond either sir.” Holtz said. Leaning through the door frame.    
  
“He’s probably hiding somewhere in here.” Higgins growled. His eyes flicked to the stack of ancient papers to his side. 1934, 1897, 1847, he was definitely a nutter. No sane man ever kept a collection of  damn newspapers. And that included those stuck up librarians too. “So we just have to find him.”    
  
He marched off, boots stomping on creaking floorboards, the world clashing outside. Higgins hadn’t tried to worm out a nutter in 5 whole years, and he wanted to keep it that way, it was small cop shit. Scrounging through papers, filth, looking for nothing more than a damn conspiracy nut who skimped out on his damn taxes. Higgins started to grind his teeth. He needed a damn cigarette.    
  
“Don’t think I didn’t notice that pile of sick you left me outside, boy.” Higgins said sifting through rubbish.    
  
“Sick, sir?”    
  
“That huge pile of fucking bile you left out in the rain, son!”    
  
“Um… that wasn’t me, sir.”   
  
Higgins paused, his hand hovering over a large stack of cans. “What did you say son?”   
  
“Uh, that pile of throw up wasn’t from me, sir?”    
  
Higgins ears pricked.   
  
It was a stop. A switch. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise, his nose flare, his brow furrow. The rain pattered against the roof, and the storm crackled over head, but the cabin. It was unnaturally quiet. Where the world rocked outside, the cabin sat, undisturbed, waiting,  soulless. Like every pore was oozing. Something hideous, something dark. It was something you picked up from a decade in the force. Quietness. It means different things for different places. There was the quiet sunday morning, the quiet intake of breath or the kick of a can when a delinquent pretends they’re not in a freshly graffitied alleyway. But then there was the third quiet. It put you nerves on end, like it was electric. The quiet were the gun felt oh so cold and real against your hip. Where your nails dug into your palm. The quiet where something is lurking behind the corner, something a beat cop was never meant to see, was never trained for. Something that puts your wits on ends. The very air begins to crackle with what is missing. It was one of those places that consumed you whole.    
  
Higgins wasn’t scared, he was never scared in his life. He was upright, he was the old guard, he wasn’t like those damn officer shits he relies on at work. He wasn’t afraid of the gotdamned dark.    
  
But, there was something off about the rug under the kitchen table.    
  
Higgins squatted down. His hands flicking some of the rain of his trousers. There was something damn stupid about this shack, and he was going to get to the damn bottom of it. “Are you sure that vomit outside wasn’t from you, boy?” He spat.    
  
“No, sir!” Holtz welped.    
  
Higgins peeled the soggy table rug back. The smell of mould stinging his nose, the rotting fabric sticking to his thick fingers. The floor was pristine here, almost glossy. But in the middle, a jagged trap door, and a smooth iron handle.    
  
“Do you think the vomit came from the hoarder, sir?” Holtz squeaked.   
  
But Higgins ignored him. No, something much more interesting was about that stack of bile outside. He grabbed the handle, slippery and cool in his hand.    
  
He tugged it up.   
  
**...**   
  
  
“...shit.”    
  
  
  


 

*

  
  
  


  
The mystery machine still rattled as it bounced over the forest track. But again, to have some noise in this van was at least something. Nobody spoke. And it made everything uncomfortably loud. The scratching of Velma's pencil, soft snoring of Scooby, the creaking leather of Fred's grip. And on top of that Daphne could still feel the bile on her nose. It literally stuck in her head, whenever she thought back to the shack she felt like she couldn’t breathe. 

This wasn't how things were supposed to go.

 

She felt sick of thinking this. Well, she felt sick for a lot of reasons. She dry heaved. The scratching of pencil on paper paused, then continued. 

 

Things were spinning. Like that scene from the wizard of Oz where Dorothy watched the tornado rip her home from the ground. Not that she would be caught dead wearing a dress like that… but she did feel like she had a little in common with that.    
She wondered who Velma would be in that. Probably the wicked witch of the west.    
  
Shaggy cleared his throat, wringing his hands and looking around the van. He looked like a meerkat crossed with an ancient butler, hovering on the outskirts but with eyes like saucers. She hadn’t seen him so restless before, and after what seemed like 1 minute to 20 of him sitting as if he was on a bed of nails he lurched for the radio. The dial went on. Static. Opera. Christian hymns. A crackling radio play. 

 

Then music to her chilly ears.   
  
“Welcome to the Hamishville 3PM news report.” Daphne sat up, a pencil stopped scratching again.    
  
“Not the news.” Fred spat silently. She wouldn’t of heard him if she couldn’t keep her eye off the hulking form of him over that spindly steering wheel. He stuck out like a sore thumb. But Shaggy certainly didn’t hear Fred. He was too busy bundling his knocky knees to his chest. The radio thankfully stayed on.   
  
Daphne couldn’t help but subconsciously watch Fred as well.    
  
“You like the news didn’t you Daphne?” Shaggy whispered, his voice small and harsh. It wasn’t much of  a question, it wasn’t even directed much at her, and if it was she had waited a little too long to properly reply. So she listened in, blurring her eyes, but as much as she wanted to she found it hard to think of her homely rosewood floor right now. The radio crackled on.    
  
“Sad news as local police rule missing persons Thomas baker as dead today. Police ruled his death as non suspicious this morning, joining one of the many tourists who lose their footing at Jaggertooth Peak…” The radio crackled.    
  
“Convenient.” Velma said bitterly.    
  
“Isn’t that the cliff just North of here?” Daphne balled her hands up in her lap. Fred scoffed.    
  
“Not everything has to be a- a - a giant conspiracy!” Fred shot his hand in the air. Slamming it back down on the wheel. 

 

Velma kept scratching notes into her notepad.   
  
Shaggy tensed his shoulders. 

 

“...In other unrelated sad news: local recluse Jebediah Wudstrop was found dead this morning. Police responded to an inquiry from his sister Ms Deborah Wudstrop from Ghoul’s harbour. He was said to have passed of natural causes…”   
  
“What…?”    
  
“So all of this was for nothing.” Fred growled.    
  
“No, that’s not what I…”   
  
“We went on this wild goose chase and got us in either deeper trouble with the police… for nothing!” Fred slammed his fists on the steering wheel. “What are we doing?! We were home this time last week, Daph. HOME!” He slammed his fist in the ceiling. Everything stopped. Shaggy whimpered. 

Fred rolled the van to the side of the road to a stop. The engine cutting and the van falling silent. He heavily opened the drivers door. “I’m setting up camp. Where are the tents?”   
  
“But, but… it’s like 3 in the afternoon, man!” Shaggy squeaked.    
  
“Then we wait until nighttime.” Fred slammed the door shut. 

  
  
  


*

 

Daphne couldn't sleep. 

 

She just lay on her back.

 

Her shoulders prickles something awful, and she could smell herself after not showering for two days. Velma and Scooby snored around her, and Fred and Shaggy were somewhere outside. 

 

But she felt wrong.

 

She was dead tired but her bones felt jolted with electricity. Electricity she couldn't shake no matter how often she tossed and turned under her blanket. She was restless, (and it wasn't even because of Velma this time). 

 

She couldn't help but think about Jebodiah Wudstrop. 

 

She hated it. He was dead, a corpse, horribly horribly mutilated until her stomach churned like the storm this morning. But she couldn't help but clock back to it...

 

Why were the police ruling it natural causes? 

 

She hated it.    
  
Out of everything right now that was what stuck out to  her. She was kicked out of home! Her mother didn't even want to THINK of her! Her whole life was drowning, floundering, beneath the oozing oily swells of Hamishville. But the damn mystery was the only damn thing going through her head. Like a broken record player, round and round and round, scratchy broken horrible sounds.    
  
What happened to Thomas Baker?   
  
She wanted to know why! Everything seemed so off, so horrific, so QUESTIONABLE! And she was being so unlady like thinking of such morbid things. A man was KILLED… and all she could think of was connecting the dots to it. What kind of respectable woman was she. She was becoming a deviant. A wretch! A DISGRACE.   
  
Maybe this was why her father banned her from such unsightly detective novels. 

 

Daphne brought her hands to her face and pulled down on her cheeks. She hated this. She drummed her fingers on her stomach, she  rolled ten more times, she tried to count her breathing to Scooby. 

 

She groaned. 

 

She sat up. 

 

She couldn't shake it anymore. 

 

Velma snored softly next to her, completely out cold, an arm awkwardly stuck behind her head and her mouth open like a fly trap. It was almost cute. But most importantly was a small wad of paper that sat in Velma's hand. Her notebook. The notebook that she wrote into the entire time since this damn debacle. 

 

And a notebook that was certainly full of clues. It made her palms itch.

 

She wanted to know what was inside. It wasn't an invasion right? It was only full of details about Thomas Baker. 

 

Daphne chewed her lip. 

 

She didn’t even have to mull it over long. How far was she falling from grace.

 

She HAD to know. 

 

She held her breath. Hand out. She had to. 

 

She daintily picked up the notepad. Slightly tugging it from her hand. The hand balled up. Daphne kept back. Thumping into the van wall. Velma groaned. Breathed in. Rubbed her nose. Rolled onto her side. 

 

The snoring continued. 

 

Daphne sighed in relief, sinking back to the van door. She reached behind her, picking up the torch the nudists were kind enough to lend.

 

She tried to not think of the nudists. 

 

And with that she bundled to the back door, blanket around her shoulders, flashlight in her mouth, notepad in hand. She gently lifted the van door. And whisked off into the night. 


End file.
